How IT Decision Makers and Business Executives Agree and Disagree on IT Investment

In the second part of a national two-part study on current IT trends and market opportunities, business executives and IT decision makers from companies across diverse industries, services, locations and work force size showed mixed opinions on the prioritization of and investment in enterprise technology solutions.

The online survey was fielded for Appian by Harris Poll in February 2015 and consisted of representatives from companies with $1 billion or more in revenue in different industries, services, location, and work force size.

In the survey business executives (95 percent) and IT decision makers (94 percent) agreed on the previous challenges with legacy technology providers when building, implementing and maintaining custom software which were defined as software applications that must be built by either a company’s internal IT team or through outsourced development because the required functionality cannot be purchased through a packaged software offering.

However, other aspects of the survey show disagreement when it comes to investing in custom software and cloud-based application platforms:

- 87 percent of respondents from both groups believe custom software is driving innovation in technology.

- Business executives think that operations (60 percent), customer service (55 percent), and finance (50 percent) are the key business areas that are driving the need for new technological solutions and applications.

- 70 percent of IT decision makers cited investment in cloud-based application development as a solution to custom software, however only 58 percent of business executives understand the value of this solution from an investment perspective.

- Business executives and IT decision makers agree that the top benefit of custom software is its ability to be designed to serve a unique need (53 percent).

- Agility to make enhancements (48 percent), delivering better customer service (45 percent), ease of integration (44 percent), and efficiency of software (44 percent) were also cited as benefits by business executives.

- Both groups agreed financial services is the industry that will most benefit from custom software (59 percent and 48 percent).