Johannesburg, 25 Aug 2011
Gartner's 2011 survey shows that chief executive officers still heavily favour tried and tested IT technologies in their strategic plans.
The survey, which was conducted at the end of last year, showed nearly half of CEOs knew what their next strategic IT capacity would be and were implementing it already, while another quarter knew what it was, but had not yet implemented it.
For those 75% of respondents, nearly 30% were planning more ERP, and over 20% were planning more sales and CRM-related investments.
Gartner VP Mark Raskino quipped that he was somewhat let down.
"Are you excited? I'm not. Although Peter Drucker once said that all business is about controlling costs and winning customers, and ERP is about controlling costs and CRM is about winning customers. But both of those are concepts from the early to mid-1990s.
“If this is the great information age, is the next great information age after the great recession just more ERP? At the bottom of the list is cloud computing and mobile. Whose job is it to change their mind about these technologies?"
Raskino said for South African companies, there was a bright spot.
"I do think that a lot of business leaders in SA really have got the message about the importance of mobile. But overall the result is the same old themes about IT-enabled business change. I take that to mean that CEOs are not going to gift us with the answer. We are going to have to offer them these ideas."
Raskino said data coming from business leaders in SA still shows reasonable confidence.
"This is a year in which CEOs have been prepared to invest more money in IT. Only 13% of CEOs have cut their spend this year. Forty-one percent will increase it. We don't know where things are headed right now. It's a lagging indicator, but really we are living form week to week right now.
“We're on the boundary of several scenarios. The good thing is that even though things may get pretty bad in the US and Europe, SA should come through pretty unscathed. Of course, we are in a globally connected economy, but we have some insularity, and we have the sort of growth that emerging markets have; recession is mild compared to the rest."
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