IT doesn’t help businesses achieve their demands

IT is not a service that is helping businesses achieve their business demands, a report has found.

In a survey of 650 European business and IT leaders 72 percent said this service didn’t fulfil their business needs, while 67 percent added that they did not believe that their company considered IT systems to be a help,

The Ambition/Maturity Gap and the need for BPM report, conducted by Cordys also found that improving customer service and engagement and cutting costs were deemed as more important with 70 percent of those surveyed claiming that these were prioritised over IT systems.

Nearly all – 92 percent- of those surveyed also said they would like to see improvements made to the way their business functions to drive productivity including improving employee productivity, while 68 percent said they would like to see more collaboration between departments.

However, 65 percent of those asked said that IT was not helping them make the changes they required, with 80 percent pointing out that their systems were not good enough.

In particular 45 percent said this part of their business failed to help in managing unplanned customer interactions, while 44 percent said it let them down on gaining a single view of the business need. A further 43 percent said they didn’t think their IT systems played a part in bringing data onto mobile devices.

However, over half admitted that they had been asked to make changes to this part of their business, with the current economic environment spearheading the need to deliver projects more quickly.

Most IT Directors and Managers also pointed out that there were projects to improve operational effectiveness  already underway, with 74 percent claiming they had plans to focus on priorities including information system integration.

There are however still barriers with the study showing that IT has failed to deliver in some areas. Just over a third of those surveyed said this included projects taking longer than planned, while 17 percent admitted that they had struggled to get  IT to absorb and react in a timescale that matched expectations.

According to Cordys, there is one part of IT that many of those surveyed agreed on and that was that they do not work together on projects and priorities with the rest of the business. The company said that this could have serious implications, with 23 percent of business leaders completely ignoring IT and going for cloud based services.

However it claimed that organisations using a business process management suite (BPMS) to represent and model their company’s business process were more likely to deliver the IT systems needed compared with those that didn’t. It said that over half of IT leaders using this technology considered themselves as helpful within their business compared with just a third of non-BPMS users.

Art Landro, chief executive officer, Cordys, said: “It’s clear that current pressures on organisations caused both by economic conditions and an increasingly competitive landscape means that businesses are demanding more from IT and within a tighter timeframe.

“The study reveals some of the reasons why IT is failing to meet the business need, and what the consequences are. But encouragingly there were a small group of businesses for which the situation is more positive – those using BPM technology to make real step changes.”