Buying in IT skills

In the third of our series of CIMA survey blogs, we examine the barriers to IT investment and the rise of the hybrid IT model.

When CIMA finance leaders were asked to rate the difficulties in delivering IT investments over the next 12-24 months the findings revealed that the biggest barrier to success is the companies’ financial performance impacting budget followed by the lack of skills of the in-house team. What is concerning is that a lack of confidence in their IT strategy is still a moderate or extreme barrier for 24% of respondents.

Forty per cent of respondents thought that the lack of clarity over the skills needed of their internal teams would be the biggest barrier to delivering IT investments, which might explain the growing popularity of hybrid IT models.

Yet another barrier was selecting and engaging the right IT partner to deliver those skills.

With 50% of respondents planning to invest in a major line of business application change, the slow but continuing investment in cloud infrastructure, new contemporary IT solutions and continued investments in new innovative technology, companies are opting to buy in the IT skills they need– their teams can’t do it all internally.

This view is further backed up with stats showing that approximately two thirds of companies surveyed had some sort of co-sourced/managed services arrangement with a third party. Only a small minority of companies fully outsourced their IT function.

In summary then, more companies appear to be considering a hybrid model of IT spend, mixing in-house expertise and Infrastructure and Software as a Service (SaaS). This suggests that the need for strategic relationships with IT partners could be key for the long-term success of the internal IT department. However, with 35% of respondents saying they were struggling to engage the right IT partner, competition amongst IT service providers is likely to increase.

Watch our Managed Service Directors and CSO discuss plugging the IT skills gap in our four minute video.