Innovation demands putting pressure on IT departments

Innovation

Although businesses realise the need for innovation and using disruptive technologies in the workplace, these demands are putting IT departments under pressure to perform, a report has revealed.

The Business Performance Innovation (PBI) Network carried out a survey that revealed the pressure is coming from senior decision makers who are looking into the technologies to implement in their organisation and want their company to perform better when it comes to customer engagement and digital experience.

70 per cent of business leaders said technology has become far more important to their business, but 52 per cent think their IT department ranks as poor or "just making progress" when it comes to innovation.

"From the C-suite to operational units, senior managers are eager to see progress in implementing a broad range of technologies that increase their agility, improve customer experience, and make their companies more competitive," notes Dave Murray, head of thought leadership at the BPI Network. "We believe this constitutes a new scorecard for IT, with greater emphasis on IT's role in driving business growth and market differentiation."

46 per cent of the 250 executives polled said ensuring reliability, scalability, and security of IT infrastructures is the best way to measure digital transformation, while 38 per cent said they think new ideas and solutions for developing the business is important.

The majority of businesses executives said they can see clear benefits to using data centre and cloud transformation, with the technologies offering increased agility for business changes, cost efficiency and faster time to market.

"Companies in every industry and every part of the world are realising that they must embrace a new model of business responsive data centers and networks in order to drive innovation, agility, and speed," said Richard Garratt of Dimension Data. "Today's discussion around the data center and cloud-enabled hybrid IT models is rooted in the need to respond more effectively and rapidly to the strategic needs of enterprises in a very fasting changing business environment."

Clare Hopping
Freelance writer

Clare is the founder of Blue Cactus Digital, a digital marketing company that helps ethical and sustainability-focused businesses grow their customer base.

Prior to becoming a marketer, Clare was a journalist, working at a range of mobile device-focused outlets including Know Your Mobile before moving into freelance life.

As a freelance writer, she drew on her expertise in mobility to write features and guides for ITPro, as well as regularly writing news stories on a wide range of topics.