From September to December 2010, 2,000 CIOs from across the world were interviewed by Gartner to understand what their priorities were for 2011. Here are the results:
Top 10 Business Priorities:
- Increasing enterprise growth
- Attracting and retaining new customers
- Reducing enterprise costs
- Creating new products and services (innovation)
- Improving business processes
- Implementing and updating business applications
- Improving technical infrastructure
- Improving enterprise efficiency
- Improve operations
- Improving business continuity, risk and security.
Top 10 Technology Priorities:
- Cloud computing
- Virtualisation
- Mobile Technologies
- IT Management
- Business Intelligence
- Networking, voice, and data communications
- Enterprise applications
- Collaboration technologies
- Infrastructure
- Web 2.0
Not sure how this affects you? Well give this a try:
1. Print off this post, find somewhere comfortable to read the list again and with a pen, mark down using a scale of 1-10 (1 being the weakest and 10 being the strongest) how capable you think your business is in fulfilling each of the priorities.
2. Then, with a different coloured pen, using the same scale of 1-10 (1 being would not like to and 10 being where you would like to), rate each item on the list according to whether you would like to be more involved.
You should look out for two things, complimentary pairs that show where your strengths lay and where you would like to be involved, and those that conflict i.e. where you are weak but would like to be more active in. By doing so, you set yourself up for a better idea of what you should be actioning over the next few weeks.
It may also be interesting to get the rest of your team to try the same quick jottings and see if there are any interesting differences of opinion. You may also gain insight into those subject areas that require further understanding as to where your opportunities lay.
Remember, the 10 business priorities listed should be what any Trusted Business Advisor (TBA) should lead with in their communication strategy. It will be the 10 technical priorities that follow which will be instrumental in helping to achieve them.
You can use these lists to help structure what you communicate with your clients during the forthcoming year and take them on a logical and relevant journey.
Further information on the 2011 CIO Agenda from Gartner can be found here.
Susanne Dansey is the Managing Director of Purple Cow Ideas Management – an organisation that facilitates a paradigm shift in the collaborative nature of the ICT Industry. You can follow her on Twitter and join the conversation on Facebook.
bravo….the number of people now aligning to what Gartner is saying is encouraging. I still maintain that the secret sauce for the dramatic shift from Cutting Enteprise Costs from 2nd to 8th by 2013 is because of cloud. Now whether the CIO respondents were thinking cloud explicitly or outsourcing, redundancies and so on is a spin to this but if I were in sales I would be jumping on this with a passion and driving all my conversations into this area.
So thank you for posting this.
Posted by brummieruss | May 5, 2011, 4:06 pm