A new report has revealed that digital strategy is controlled by either the CIO or CTO in 60% of European organisations, providing an opportunity for IT leaders to shape their business’s future.
In order to achieve their goals, leaders are urged to use their resources wisely to innovate solutions that reduce costs and maintain existing service support.
About 31% of respondents said that CIO is responsible for organisation’s digital strategy, while 29% cited the CTO.
The CEO was responsible for 15% of respondents and just 6% were in favor of chief digital officer.
The survey also revealed that only 9% of IT department time is spent on innovating and 36% of organisations have an innovation programme.
Most of the European firms (84%) expect radical change, while 26% of IT departments have complete understanding of the IT requirements of the rest of the business and 21% of businesses do not measure the performance of their IT department.
Claranet UK managing director Michel Robert said: "IT leaders have faced challenges from many angles in recent years. Constrained budgets have provided limited room for manoeuvre and the relative easy access of cloud computing, has given different parts of a business the ability to procure their own services and applications.
"The CIO/CTO needs to really help determine and deliver against the strategy of the business by providing great service today and focusing on innovation – a challenging thing to do.
"The strong position in which IT leaders find themselves to guide the future of their businesses, combined with the fact that budgets are set to increase quite significantly in some countries over the next years, means that we can expect to see new levels of innovation across all sectors in Europe."
Claranet UK surveyed 900 senior IT decision-makers from mid-market organisations in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and the Benelux region.
