SAP CIO Survey reveals need for a renewed focus on Innovation

SAP announced today the results of a CIO study conducted by the company across EMEA, which reveals the need for a renewed focus on innovation. According to the study, surveyed organisations agreed on the need to refocus IT budgets toward IT innovation in order to improve business performance, productivity and profitability.  The study looked into the IT spend priorities of nearly 500 senior IT decision-makers in eight countries across EMEA, and concluded that a key issue was the division of IT spend among three areas: operations, maintenance and innovation.

The key results in the survey according to SAP were:

• A third of companies surveyed said that their current IT strategy is too focused on “simply keeping the lights on” in the day-to-day running of existing IT systems. Overall, 60 percent of companies said that this IT strategy has held them back from investing in innovation.
• Over half of the companies surveyed believe that they would get greater business value if more was spent on IT innovation.
• 44 percent of respondents said that lack of spend on IT innovation is having a negative business impact, saying it has directly resulted in lack of productivity.
• SAP customers are already addressing their IT infrastructure to open the door for innovation.

Makes interesting reading!