CEOs rank technological factors higher than CIOs

I recently read the report from the 2011 IBM Global CIO Study, the result of “face-to-face conversations with more than 3,000 chief information officers worldwide.”

Frankly, it read a little more like an IBM sales brochure than an objective research report — kind of light on actual data. But I did find one semi-quantitative diagram to be particularly intriguing:

CIO-CEO Ranking of External Factors

In a study last year, IBM asked CEOs to rank the impact of external forces on their organizations. The above diagram compares those rankings with how CIOs ordered the same list — previously in 2009 and now in 2011.

A few observations:

  • If the CEO considers technological factors to be so important, the CIO isn’t the only executive who needs to be addressing this — the CMO needs to have a handle on technological factors in his or her domain as well.
  • It’s interesting that CEOs rank technological factors higher than CIOs over the past few years. I guess I would have expected the CIO to be more attuned to those forces — and therefore rank them higher (or at least as high as the CEO does).
  • Regulatory concerns as a top external force on the CIO’s mind makes a lot of sense to me — and dovetails with my belief that the IT organization should retain control of regulatory governance as a subset of technology management.

What do you think?

Get chiefmartec.com directly in your inbox!

Subscribe to my newsletter to get the latest insights on martech as soon as they hit the wire. I usually publish an article every week or two — aiming for quality over quantity.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *