IBM Study Shows CIOs Switching Focus To Engaging Customers

Our friends at SmallBusinessTrends.com are leading authorities of articles ranging from a wide array of topics such as managerial advice to marketing ideas to people wanting a little humor. In fact, they are renown for bringing incredibly informative and articulated ideas to an engaging audience of avid readers. They’ve even been kind enough to publish works from our very own CEO, Curt Finch. IBM heralded a survey studying 1,600 CIO’s around the world. 

Below are the results of the study. Head on over to their site to read the full article.

Who Exactly Did IBM Survey?

They surveyed:

• 1,656 Chief Information Officers (CIOs)
• 884 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs)
• 576 Chief Finance Officers (CFOs)
• 342 Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs)
• 524 Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs)
• 201 Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs)

That’s a lot of chiefs – sharing vital insights for building better businesses.

According to the study, it appears leaders’ priorities are shifting from intra-enterprise efficiency and productivity to a new agenda led by the front office – focused on extra enterprise engagement, transparency, collaboration and dialogue with clients.

It seems today’s digitally enfranchised and empowered customers are leading CIOs on a new path, one that demands collaborative technologies designed for today’s 24/7 mobile workforce.

Highlights of the IBM Study Include:

• More than 80 percent of CIOs aim to digitize their front offices within the next few years to sync with customers more efficiently – signaling a great trend toward collaborative technologies.
• More than 80 percent of CIOs intend to focus on two key initiatives: Using analytics to create deep insights from structures and unstructured data and implementing leading-edge technologies, processes and tools in the front office to better understand and sync with customers.
• CIOs recognize that extracting meaningful, actionable insights from collected information will require a vastly robust information architecture to fully leverage big data.
• Over the next few years, 84 percent of CIOs plan to invest in mobility solutions, another 84 percent on business analytics and optimization, 64 percent on cloud computing and another 64 percent on internal collaboration and social networking.

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