Now in its 18th year, the Harvey Nash / KPMG CIO Survey is the largest global IT leadership survey in the world, with almost 3,400 responses from CIOs and technology leaders across 82 countries. This year’s findings reveal an undeniable increase in influence and opportunity for the CIO. On the cusp of the fourth industrial revolution, we are seeing the emergence of the ‘Creative CIO’ – a transformational business leader, technology strategist and business model innovator.

The focus has moved from ‘keeping the lights on’ to creating business value, harnessing the social and technical disruption all around. The Creative CIO is at the forefront of digital change, both driving it and responding to it with new technologies, delivery models and governance approaches.

Read the executive summary report: Harvey Nash KPMG CIO Survey Results.

Key highlights of the report include:

• Digital has firmly found a place on the Board and C-Suite agendas

58 percent of respondents reported that their organization has a clear digital vision and strategy, with Board or C-Suite executives owning 36 percent of these strategies. Increasingly organizations are expecting their CIO to lead the delivery of the digital strategy.

• CIOs are struggling to free up funding to drive innovation

Only 31 percent of respondents have a formal process to allocate resources to drive technology-enabled innovation across IT and the business.

• Cloud is no longer a choice

IT is not the sole purchaser of cloud solutions and 59 percent of large organizations plan to make a ‘significant’ investment across Infrastructure, Platform and Software as a Service in the next one to three years.

• Less than a quarter of CIOs feel ‘Very well positioned’ to deal with IT security / cyber-attacks

In addition, only 40 percent of respondents cited ‘Insiders’ as a significant concern, however an increasingly higher proportions of cyber incidents are originating from within the organization.

• CIOs must look to increase the depth of their relationships outside of their traditional ‘comfort zones’ of Finance and Operations

Only one third of CIOs reported having ‘very strong’ relationships with HR, Sales and Marketing. This can lead to a fragmented approach when implementing a digital strategy.

• Big Data continues to be a priority

But there is a clear skills gap with 39 percent of respondents suffering from a lack of skills in this area.

• Download the full report (PDF 3.2 MB)
  
• Read the executive summary (PDF 930 KB)
• View the infographic (PDF 268 KB)
  
• View the KPMG Special Report (PDF 971 KB)
• View the MIT CISR special report: CIOs – A career choice ahead? (PDF 1.04 MB)