South: Sharp rise in business projects involving IT departments, say 79% of CIOs

New research from Robert Half Technology shows that the digital transformation agenda is driving more businesses to involve IT in new projects to enhance customer experience and improve operational processes. The majority (79%) of IT directors say that the number of business projects involving the IT department has risen either somewhat (15%) or significantly (64%) compared with five years ago.

Only 2% of IT directors surveyed said that the number of projects their teams were involved with had decreased and the remainder (19%) said there had been no change. The no-change figure rises to 24% for large companies, suggesting that the involvement of IT in business projects has in them been under way for longer than for small (15%) and medium-sized (18%) companies which may not have had the same level of IT resource at their disposal.

The need to compete with new entrants, secure customer loyalty and meet regulatory demands has put pressure on organisations to digitalise customer-facing and operational processes. Of those IT directors who have seen an increase, almost half (47%) said that they had introduced projects to digitally enhance selling and to enhance customer services.

A similar number (44%) of IT directors said they had introduced data analytics to improve performance management, while 42% said they had projects in place to digitalize operational processes. Just over a third (37%) were introducing digital enhancements to the extended workplace to enable staff to work any place, any time. Just over a quarter (28%) said they were applying data analytics to better understand customer behaviour and 13% were transitioning from a physical to a digital marketplace.

According to Robert Half, remuneration levels for hard-to-find IT professionals will rise at double the average rate of 2.1% for roles such as developer (4.5%), mobile application developer (4.3%) and junior developer (4.2%) in the next 12 months.

Neil Owen, director of Robert Half Technology, commented: “With increased investment into new technology platforms that support key business outcomes, organisations are trying to manage how these services come together to achieve a maximum return.  This trend means that IT professionals with strong communication and collaboration skills as well as technical experience and knowledge are in increasing demand.”