Calyx: CIOs feel left out in business strategy stakes

Survey reveals growing frustration at fighting to keep the lights on, rather than helping to shape business strategy

Nearly half of the CIOs surveyed by VAR Calyx feel their job involves "fire-fighting" and "keeping the lights on" rather than helping to drive business strategy.

The firm questioned more than 200 CIOs and IT directors, asking them to name their most important responsibility.

In total, 33 per cent said they saw it as driving strategic growth through technology, 16 per cent said they spend their working day driving the development of business through IT, while just 11 per cent said they mainly focus on developing strategic concepts around IT to move their business forward.

This is compared with 46 per cent who said their everyday task involved "fire-fighting" – or just keeping systems up and running.

And that is despite the fact that 64 per cent of those questioned sit on the company’s board of directors.

According to Calyx, this means many firms are losing out on creating a competitive edge, with senior IT decision makers shunted from one problem to another dealing with issues such as data management, security and fulfilling board-driven demands for cost efficiencies and cost cutting.

Steve Clark, chief executive of Calyx, was unsurprised by the findings: “Businesses are reliant on technology at practically every level and the cost of downtime is well documented – lost sales, lost productivity, damage to brand – even the shortest outage can be financially crippling for a business," he said. "So it isn’t surprising that uptime is a top priority for CIOs. What is surprising is that – with the breadth of skills needed to meet today’s maintenance and support challenges – they are trying to do the job in-house.”

However, despite the need for outside help, Calyx’s figures reveal that about 60 per cent of respondents do not outsource their IT to an MSP, mainly because of cost.

Clark added: “Today’s ICT demands in-depth knowledge of networking, telephony, storage, applications. It’s impossible for all but the largest enterprises to hold that expertise in-house. But by outsourcing, you’re gaining access to a team of specialists who know these technologies inside out and who can bring added value to your business through their sharing that expertise.

“The most forward-looking companies are using technology to mould, transform and drive strategic growth – and in doing so they are gaining a tangible competitive advantage,” he said. “This can only happen when senior IT executives are willing and able to relinquish responsibility for day-to-day maintenance, management and support tasks to a trusted third-party provider and instead focus on taking an overarching and long-term view of their business’s future.”