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Meeting the Challenge

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24 Effectiveness meets enterprise challenges

40 Raising effectiveness changes IT and the enterprise

60 CIOs must be decisive and resourceful in 2009

72 Appendix: Survey demographics

74 Further reading

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Meeting the Challenge: The 2009 CIO Agenda 1

 foreword

Enterprises face a challenging economic environment in

2009. They expect IT to contribute by delivering results
in an uncertain economy while reducing enterprise and IT
costs. To do this, CIOs need to be decisive and resourceful
in building an effective enterprise that can meet current and
future challenges.

2 Gartner Executive Programs

In 2009, executives face challenging global economic conditions that have not existed for more than
50 years. Leading enterprises recognize the seriousness of economic conditions, but they are not
paralyzed by them. Their leaders have confidence in their ability to use IT to achieve results.

Effectiveness gains importance in uncertain times. Defined as the ability to achieve financial and stra-
tegic plans, effectiveness gives enterprises the flexibility to meet challenge with change. This report
addresses the question, How will CIOs create effectiveness to meet economic and enterprise challenges?

Meeting the Challenge: The 2009 CIO Agenda was written by Mark McDonald (group vice president)
in collaboration with Jacques Begin (senior writer) and Susan Fortino (content production director).

We would like to thank the many organizations and individuals that generously contributed their insights
and experiences to the research, including:

• T
 he 1,526 CIOs who responded to this year’s CIO survey, representing more than $138 billion in
corporate and public sector IT spending.

• T
 he contributors to our interviews and case studies: Andrea Pereira, Avon (Brazil); Joe Zucchero,
CARQUEST (U.S.); Rebecca Jacoby, Cisco (U.S.); Garry Whatley, Corporate Express (Australia);
Wolfgang Gaertner, Deutsche Bank (Germany); Massimo Lo Campo, Elica (Italy); Steven Jennings and
Craig Bernard, Harris County, Texas (U.S.); John Johnson and Tom Birch, Intel (U.S.); Scott Studham,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (U.S.); Paul Alexander, Pinellas County, Florida (U.S.); Gustavo Pérez
Salinas, Sigma Alimentos (Mexico); Robert Beach, Seminole County, Florida (U.S.); Tom Coleman,
Sloan Valve (U.S.); Otto Doll, State of South Dakota (U.S.); Lars Holten, Statkraft (Norway); Shuzo
Sumi and Tsukasa Makino, Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance (Japan); Magnus Holmqvist, Volvo
(Sweden); and Ben Wishart, Whitbread (U.K.).

• Other members of the Gartner CIO research team.

Meeting the Challenge: The 2009 CIO Agenda 3

 executive summary

The challenges posed by uncertain and volatile economic

conditions are changing enterprise plans and strategies.
Enterprises are responding in different ways, based on their
confidence in achieving results.

Economic conditions challenge enterprise plans and strategies. As enterprises face continued economic
volatility and uncertainty, their confidence in the future also becomes challenged. Two fundamental
questions face executives in 2009:

• In an uncertain economy, where should the enterprise focus its attention and resources?

• Beyond cutting costs, what are the enterprise goals in a volatile market?

Business expectations of IT call for the CIO to play a role in responding to these questions. The CIO
faces the challenge of delivering improvements needed to raise enterprise effectiveness while managing
IT resources and performance. Success requires the CIO to take decisive action and to be resourceful
across operations in delivering results.

Business expectations for IT focus on improving current operations and

performance
Business expectations Ranking of business priorities CIOs
selected as one of their top 5 priorities

Ranking 2009 2008 2007 2006 2012

Improving business processes 1 1 1 1 2
Reducing enterprise costs 2 5 2 2 7
Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness 3 6 4 * 6
Attracting and retaining new customers 4 2 3 3 3
Increasing the use of information/analytics 5 8 7 6 8
Creating new products or services (innovation) 6 3 10 9 1
Targeting customers and markets more effectively 7 9 * * 9
Managing change initiatives 8 12 * * 12
Expanding current customer relationships 9 7 * * 11
Expanding into new markets or geographies 10 4 9 * 4
Consolidating business operations 11 13 14 * 15
Supporting regulation, reporting and compliance 12 14 13 * 16
Creating new sources of competitive advantage 13 11 8 * 5
* New question
4 Gartner Executive Programs
 “Raising enterprise effectiveness is the recipe for responding
to economic volatility and uncertainty.”
2009 Gartner CIO survey

Effectiveness meets enterprise challenges

An effective enterprise has the confidence to change in challenging times. In today’s environment
of cost containment, CIOs can cut costs or reduce the company’s cost structure. Leading CIOs are
changing their cost structures and using IT differently in order to achieve and sustain results. Raising
effectiveness requires changing the enterprise and IT by building on the four pillars that support the
enterprise’s ability to achieve results.

Enterprise effectiveness comes from a combination of factors

The enterprise consistently achieves its financial and strategic objectives

Customer and Organization and IT resources IT innovation

market focus management

Executives The enterprise has IT has the right IT has a culture of

understand an information number of skilled innovation
customer and management people
market needs strategy

The enterprise is The enterprise has IT has the funding IT delivers the
effective at clear and effective to meet its technology
opening new governance commitments innovation needed
markets in the business

Executives provide The enterprise IT has the ability IT has the techni-
clear and effective uses IT to gain to deliver against cal flexibility to
leadership competitive the enterprise respond to
advantage strategy changing priorities

The enterprise is Executives IT has clear

resourced properly accurately com- and effective
for future success municate business governance
needs to IT

The enterprise is IT service levels

organized properly meet business
for success effectiveness

Enterprise factors IT factors

Meeting the Challenge: The 2009 CIO Agenda 5

 “Only 17% of CIOs report that their enterprise is more effective than IT.”
2009 Gartner CIO survey

executive summary

Raising effectiveness changes IT and the enterprise

CIOs contribute to enterprise effectiveness by raising IT effectiveness; therefore, they must concentrate
on the drivers of IT effectiveness. True leaders use these drivers as the basis for transforming IT opera-
tions and management to achieve new levels of performance.

CIOs build effective IT through transforming resources and management

practices

Effective
IT

IT Adaptive cost Increased Focus: Fewer

structure business impact things first
results

IT Consolidated Quality and cost Information and Business- Business-

operations performance business oriented IT aligned IT
management process structure

IT Modernized IT Improved IT Skilled people Effective

operations processes governance
transformation

IT
Technology Process People Management
resources

6 Gartner Executive Programs

 “35% of CIOs report to the CEO; 28% report to the CFO.”
2009 Gartner CIO survey

CIOs must be decisive and resourceful in 2009

Meeting the challenges of 2009 requires CIOs to lead their organization and enterprise through deci-
sions that have no simple answers. CIOs need to lead and have the foresight to look at IT in new ways.
They will demonstrate this leadership through the following imperatives:

• B
 e decisive in setting priorities on actions that raise enterprise effectiveness, with a focus on im-
proving business process, using business intelligence to raise visibility and enhancing workforce
effectiveness.

• D
 o the first things faster, as changing economic conditions render a large project irrelevant. CIOs
need to add schedule to their prioritization process and recognize that other important priorities can
wait. They need to place greater emphasis on the schedule (when) rather than the priorities (why).

• B
 e resourceful in restructuring IT to raise its productivity and agility, because the business will not
reduce its demand for IT just because you have fewer resources.

• M
 odernize the technical infrastructure, as new technologies offer lower cost, use less energy, deliver
better performance and provide greater capacity; the business will need all of these in the immedi-
ate future.

These imperatives form the basis for the CIO agenda and its focus on making the enterprise more ef-
fective. Every CIO will start at a different place, facing unique challenges and setting their own agenda
to marshal the resources needed to make the right decisions and deliver results across the enterprise.

CIOs will make the decisions that shape IT resources and the results
they create
Decisive Resourceful Results

• Revenue
• IT organization
• Priorities • Customers
• Tech infrastructure
• Expectations • Control
• IT people and skills
• Budgets • Cost
• Information
• Scope • Cash flow
• Time
• Metrics • Capital
• Purchasing power
• Key partners • Capacity
• Applications
• Quality

Meeting the Challenge: The 2009 CIO Agenda 7