CIOs expect total IT budgets to rise 1.8pc in 2013, about 50pc less than they did in 2012, budget benchmarks from member-based advisory company CEB suggests.
European organisations are expecting IT budgets to go up by 2pc, with increases in operational expenditures of 2.5pc driving total budget growth.
Capital expenditure budget growth has stalled but two-thirds of CIOs expect increases in operating expenditures next year, while one-fifth plan to reduce them.
CIOs also expect to allocate funding increases to projects that improve employee productivity through better insights, collaboration and mobility, and to increase IT’s delivery flexibility and efficiency.
CIOs spending on mobile applications
CEB’s survey also indicates that CIOs will double down on investments in mobile applications and information management to drive employee productivity in 2013.
Spending on mobile applications will grow 50pc in 2013, with CIOs concentrating on developing new mobile applications and ensuring existing applications are ready for the mobile environment.
The spending on mobile applications does not include funds spent to supply employees with mobile devices or marketing funds spend on mobility.
CIOs will shift spending from process automation (30pc) to information management (32pc) projects. Information management projects are considered to be those that deal with business intelligence, collaboration or customer interface.
Additionally, CIOs are expected to increase spending to make IT delivery more flexible and efficient.
Cloud attracts spending
Spending on the cloud will increase to about 7pc of total IT budgets, with Software-as-a-Service receiving the largest share of spending, followed by Infrastructure-as-a-Service.
Seventy-five per cent of organisations that offer some form of end-to-end IT services plan to devote as much as 30pc of their IT operating expenditure to this delivery model.
“CIOs recognise that the nature of work is changing and in this new environment there is a huge opportunity for IT to drive employee productivity,” said Andrew Horne, managing director at CEB.
“These investments suggest that the days of IT project queues filled with process automation projects are over. The best companies are laser focused on equipping employees with the tools they need to more effectively contribute to the bottom line. To meet this demand, IT must be more flexible than ever before, so it’s not surprising that spending on end-to-end IT services and the cloud are also slated to increase.”
