CIOs eye business analytics as 'must-have'

IBM study of 3,000 midmarket CIOs finds that 83 per cent identify need for analytics technology

Business analytics technology is fast-becoming a must-have for midmarket CIOs, as cloud computing continues to gain a foothold in corporate mindsets.

Big Blue quizzed 3,000 CIOs of midmarket firms around the globe for its study, The Essential CIO – Midmarket CIO Study 2011.

Its study looked at what constitutes the fundamental tasks of the CIO, and what traits define the outperforming CIOs as they infuse technology into products, services, processes to transform their business, drive profitability and expand into new areas.

A whopping 83 per cent identified analytics – the ability to extract actionable insights from ‘big data’ – as a top priority investment area.

This is in response to an increasingly complex business environment and the need to analyse not only structured data but also ‘unstructured’ data in the form of videos, blogs and tweets.

In addition, there was a 50 per cent increase in the number of midsize firms planning to invest in the cloud compared with IBM’s 2009 midmarket CIO study.

Other results included: 77 per cent of midmarket CIOs are focused on gaining deeper insight and intelligence, 68 per cent on people skills and 67 per cent on client intimacy. A further 72 per cent are focused on integrating business and technology to drive innovation.

The study revealed that CIOs are using a number of tools to turn data into actionable information: data warehousing (64 per cent); visual dashboards (64 per cent); master data management (63 per cent); and client analytics (63 per cent).

IBM claims that midmarket businesses, together with small enterprises, are responsible for nearly 65 per cent of global GDP, representing more than 90 per cent of all businesses and employing more than 90 per cent of the global workforce.

Ed Abrams, vice president of marketing for IBM’s global midmarket business, said: “As the economy recovers and CIOs look more to driving transformation in their companies, their role is evolving to become more associated with extracting value from technology and gaining insight from complex systems.

“CIOs who consider themselves overperformers are aware of their increased impact on the organisation, and are steadily turning to analytics and the cloud to pursue their visionary goals,” he said.