Gartner CIO Agenda 2020 - Business Priorities | Budgets | Challenges | Action list

The latest Gartner CIO Agenda 2020 promulgates and reassures 2020 is the year of growth for the IT services companies. This is buttressed by taking a look at various aspects on what the CIOs have undergone in the past years and provides a detailed action list as prescription.

1. Top Business Priorities (3 out of 5) have not changed over the last 3 years. n = no of CIOs responded

Priority	2018 (n = 2615)	2019 (n = 2743)	2020 (n = 991)
1	Growth/market share	Digital initiatives	Digital transformation; and “Digital” Has Become Business as Usual
2	Digital business/ digital transformation	Revenue/business growth	Costs (operational excellence)
3	Profit improvement/ profitability/asset monetization	Operational excellence	Growth (Revenue / business growth)
4	Innovation, R&D, new products/services	Customer experience	Security
5	Customer focus	Cost optimization/reduction	Innovation

2. IT Budgets are increasing for 2020. Expected Change in Enterprise IT Budgets are

	2018	2019	2020
Global	3.0%	2.9%	5.7% (2.8% UP)
EMEA	3.2%	3.3%	6.8% (3.5% UP)
APAC	5.1%	3.5%	8.8%(5.3% UP)
North America	2.0%	2.4%	3.6%(1.2% UP)
Latin America	2.8%	2.0%	3.3%(1.3% UP)

3. CIOs faced many turns/troubles during the last 4 years

                                i.            Organizational disruption

                               ii.            Severe operating cost pressure

                             iii.            Shifting consumer demand

                             iv.            Cybersecurity issue

                               v.            External disruption of your business environment

                             vi.            Labor disruption

4. The above troubles / turns make the following things harder.

a.       Ability to attract the right talent to fill our needs

b.      Speed at which new business initiatives are launched

c.       Ability to fund new business initiatives

d.       Speed at which business initiatives are successfully completed

e.       IT budget growth

5. Action list : Choose & Focus

Alignment à Make it dynamic	Anticipation à Take more risks	Adaptability à IT leaders turn the IT organization into an instrument of change for the enterprise.
1.       Great leadership	1.       IT as a differentiator	9. Fluid culture à In a crisis, employees must be able to change established habits and think in creative ways to meet a new set of challenges. In short, readiness for change becomes a cultural requirement.
2.       Disciplined IT investment	2.       Anticipating change	10. Enterprise Agility
3.       Compelling vision	3.       Balanced risk taking
4.       Continuous strategy
5.       Robust relationships
How CIOs should respond: ·         Improve decision support for business executives, identifying where they need more/ better/ faster/clearer data. ·         Shorten decision-making time by considering what IT can automate	How should CIOs respond? ·         Embrace the agile “servant leadership” practice of “leading from behind” to enable greater autonomy, creativity and self-management across IT.	How should CIOs respond? •         Kick-start a culture change initiative within the IT organization that emphasizes a growth mindset and continuous learning. •         Identify the new behaviors you want to encourage in IT staff.

Courtesy & Inspiration

1. Gartner 2020 Agenda

2. Gartner CIO agenda - webinar