Tech investment a top priority for CEOs

CEOs worldwide are more focused on using technology to drive business growth over the next two years than ever before, according to new research.

In fact, 63 per cent of the 400 executives responding to Gartner’s CEO and business survey – including 91 from the Asia-Pacific region – said they would increase IT investment in 2015.

Technology was the second most important category of business priority for CEOs – behind growth – and these executives are more focused on this area than at any time since 1999, said Gartner, VP, Mark Raskino.

“When we examine the subtext of the responses, the purpose of CEOs’ interest in technology becomes immediately obvious. Ove r half of the responses relate to revenue and growth-related technology issues such as multichannel, e-commerce, and m-commerce,” he said.

When asked about their technology investments over the next five years, 37 per cent of respondents ranking customer engagement management as the leading technology-enabled business capability. This was followed by digital marketing at 32 per cent and business analytics at 28 per cent.

Cloud computing is gaining recognition as CEOs realise that new, disruptive platforms are being created using cloud infrastructure, Gartner said.

Security and risk concerns are also rising among CEOs with 77 per cent of respondents agreeing that the digital world is creating new types of levels of risk for their businesses. 65 per cent felt that investment in risk practices was not keeping up with new and higher levels of risk.

“Although this was a partly prompted finding, we also saw strong evidence of this rising concern elsewhere in the responses,” said Raskino.

“CEOs are right to be concerned. As products and services become digital, they add far greater utility for the customer but also far greater power for those dark forces who might usurp digital control. CEOs and CIOs should collaborate to jolt the executive team out of cyber-risk complacency,” he said.

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