DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Society for Information Management (SIM), a not-for-profit professional association of more than 4,500 senior-level IT leaders, today released its 2015 SIM IT Trends Study outlining seismic shifts in the information technology industry like leadership, priorities, employment, IT budgets and overall technological developments.
Now in its 35th year, the annual SIM study surveyed more than 1,000 IT leaders, including 451 chief information officers from 717 unique organizations. Those companies average $287 million in annual IT spending and $5.6 billion in annual revenues, representing approximately 25% of the U.S. economy’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“We are at a watershed moment of profound change for business, technology and IT leadership,” said SIM’s lead researcher and Professor of Information Systems at the University of North Texas Leon Kappelman, Ph.D. “Results show the focus of IT organizations and their leadership is changing, with a new emphasis on business value, strategy, innovation and speed. The entire C-suite should take heed of this report.”
Key Findings
The 2015 SIM IT Trends Study finds that how IT spends its money, how IT is being delivered, who IT leaders spend time with and what they do with their time is all changing at a drastic pace. For example, the amount of time the average CIO spends with other C-suite executives has increased sharply compared to just last year, with CIOs saying they spend 241% more time with their board of directors compared to 2013, and 78%, 67%, 40%, and 29% more with their Chief Marketing Officer, COO, CFO, and CEO, respectively.
“This indicates a huge and recent shift in CIOs focusing more on the business and strategy,” said Kappelman. “On average, CIOs spend half their time on the business and half on IT for the business. The CIO’s job is the most complicated and demanding in organizations today, and this duality is also reflected in performance measures for CIO, as well as the technologies and IT management issues that keep them up at night.”
In addition, technology investments have shifted and the five largest are:
- Analytics and business intelligence
- Data center infrastructure (New to the Study this year)
- Enterprise Resource Planning
- Application and software development (New on the top-five this year)
- Cloud Computing (growing the most and the fastest by far)
Companies are funneling an average of 5.1% of their revenue into the IT budget, up from just 3.6% in 2011, and 25% above the 10-year average of 4.1%. Of that, IT spends about 10% of its budget on cloud services, a number Kappelman said is projected to grow by more than 13% in 2015.
This year’s turnover rate for full-time IT employees is 9%, up more than 36% over last year. This is the highest IT turnover rate since the study began tracking it, and far above the 9-year average of 6.3%. Consequently, IT leaders are spending 5.0% of the IT budget on training and education, compared to just 2.9% in 2012.
The full 2015 SIM IT Trends Study Comprehensive Report provides insight on IT investments, most important and worrisome technologies and IT management issues, IT organization structure, budgets, staffing, salaries, services, performance measures and more. That’s combined with a detailed report on the role of the CIO, including reporting relationships, time utilization, background, performance measurement, tenure and skills for success.
Download the full report for use in the media here.
About The Society for Information Management (SIM)
Established in 1968, the Society for Information Management (SIM) is the premier network for IT leaders composed of more than 4,500 members including CIOs, senior IT executives, prominent academicians, consultants, and other IT leaders. SIM is an objective community of thought leaders who share experiences and rich intellectual capital, and who explore future IT direction. Through its 34 chapters, SIM provides resources and programs inspired by IT leaders for IT leaders that enable CIOs to further develop the leadership capabilities of themselves and the key and emerging leaders in their organizations.
