Digital transformation involves the entire company and its partners

Whitepaper regarding the new “2023 CIO Agenda” study by CIO, CSO and COMPUTERWOCHE

What are CIOs planning when it comes to digitalization and their corporate IT? What strategies are they pursuing and how are they addressing the shortage of IT experts? The “2023 CIO Agenda” explores these questions and more.

While cloud, security and data are now commonplace, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly important. For successful digital transformation, however, simply bringing IT up to date is not enough.

Today, a digitalization strategy addresses the entire corporate structure and culture. Management support and a sustainability concept are must-haves. Furthermore, “work-life balance” is a topic no company can or should ignore, as it is quite clear that digitalization will fail without motivated IT professionals available to implement it.

In many cases, the sheer volume of tasks exceeds internal resources and skills. This is why more and more companies are bringing in external partners, customers, service providers and sometimes even their competitors to implement future digitalization projects, thus safeguarding the future viability of their company.

Download the “2023 CIO Agenda” study whitepaper

Learn which factors CIOs or top (IT) managers within companies in the German-speaking countries are considering in their digitalization strategies.

For most companies, digital transformation is an integral part of their corporate strategy. In this study, around 80 percent of the IT decision-makers surveyed spoke of a dedicated digitalization roadmap. While cloud technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics remain core technologies, over 40 percent of respondents believe that artificial intelligence (AI) will have the greatest impact on a company’s business model in the future.

In addition to the use of new technologies, decision-makers in IT consider support from top management, the anchoring of a sustainability concept, a good work-life balance and promoting their own IT specialists to be of significant importance for a successful transformation process. 30 percent of respondents believe their company is already well positioned in this respect.

The willingness of companies to change remains stable, with 35 percent of respondents agreeing with the need to work with external partners to relieve the burden on their own IT organization and achieve the digitalization goals they have set.

This whitepaper contains:

  • Overview of CIOs’ digitalization strategies and which types of external partners are involved in them
  • Which strategies and concepts – from sourcing, to IT security, to work-life balance – are emphasized
  • Assessments of the “ingredients” required for the digital mindset
  • Forecasts on how the number of employees in corporate IT will develop
  • Overview of work-life balance solutions already in use
  • Estimates of which technologies/IT issues will change the business model most significantly

You can download the main findings from the CIO, CSO and COMPUTERWOCHE “2023 CIO Agenda” study as a free PDF.

Download the “2023 CIO Agenda” study whitepaper

Learn which factors CIOs or top (IT) managers within companies in the German-speaking countries are considering in their digitalization strategies.

The study was conducted between November and December 2022 by the CIO, CSO and COMPUTERWOCHE Custom Research Team, in cooperation with Lufthansa Industry Solutions. Individual interviews were conducted with 303 IT managers at top management level. The interviewees were drawn from various corporate divisions. The companies reported varying levels of expenditure on their IT systems.

The key findings can be accessed in the whitepaper on the IDG study, which is available free of charge. The following is a brief summary of some of the important findings and figures.

Digitalization requires partnerships

Digitalization entails multiple tasks that an IT organization within a company will struggle to handle on its own. In fact, more than 54 percent of IT managers are already cooperating with their customers and 46 percent with consulting firms to share the workload.

At 37.6 percent and 31.6 percent of the companies that were surveyed, “coopetition,” – i.e. project-based collaboration with competitors or with startups to bundle individual activities or resources – also forms part of the digitalization strategy.

Finding and retaining employees

Just under 23 percent of respondents plan to increase their workforce significantly over the next three years. Another 44 percent plan to increase it at least somewhat.

To find suitably skilled workers and retain employees, around 78 percent of the companies surveyed indicated that they provide opportunities for a good work-life balance. The top three of these are the option to work from home or remotely (54.7 percent), flexible and family-friendly working time models (53.3 percent) and healthcare support (34.4 percent).

Around 17 percent of the companies surveyed also enforce a block on e-mail communication for their employees in the evenings, at night and on weekends.

You can read more of the main findings from the “2023 CIO Agenda” study performed by CIO, CSO and COMPUTERWOCHE in the whitepaper, which can be downloaded here in PDF format free of charge.