Information Management Trends: Accenture CIO Survey

Listen to a podcast on the survey results with Accenture Information Management Services CEO Royce Bell.

However, many still have significant ground to cover before reaching this goal. In March 2007, Accenture surveyed 162 CIOs in North America and Europe about their IT investments and plans, with a focus on information management strategies and technologies. What we found confirmed our holistic approach to information management, but also presented some surprises.

Our research highlights three main themes:

• Organizations are targeting an overall information management strategy.
  
  
• Organizations are investing in information management to help them outperform the competition, rather than merely helping them "stay in the game".
  
  
• Organizations recognize the value that effective information management brings to their business.

78 percent of CIOs say their analytics are currently at a basic or silo reporting level. This contrasts with 76.5 percent who are targeting enterprise-wide integration and 75 percent who want an information management strategy in place in three years. In addition, CIOs are addressing both structured and unstructured data; 75 percent expect their structured and unstructured data to be fully integrated within three years.

The chief hurdles CIOs face in achieving their vision are funding and data quality. Technology is seen to be far and away the lowest obstacle—only five respondents say it is their No. 1 obstacle, which is good news. Accenture believes this is due to the maturity of the tools available. However, as CIOs are clearly expecting to ramp up their information management activities, they will need to consider how or where they will obtain the necessary skills—through internal means such as training or by outsourcing or using systems integrators.

An Overall Information Management Strategy
Our survey finds that CIOs see information as an enterprise-wide discipline, one where data is fully integrated across the organization, which takes into account all types of data and which gives greater access to users. More than 75 percent of respondents say they want to develop an overall information management strategy in the next three years.

92 percent of our survey respondents indicate that their information strategy takes into account classic, structured data (simply speaking, the data stored in databases) but more surprising is the extent to which respondents say they also include unstructured data, such as images, e-mail and Web content. Showing a real evolution in the market, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of CIOs polled say that their strategies take into account both data types.

When we asked where they want to be with respect to the integration of their structured and unstructured data, we discovered a further shift in target performance—more than 75 percent of respondents aim to be integrated in three years.

When it comes to data access, there is a clear desire for a new breed of "information democracy," where workers have greater access to the information they need to do their jobs and make business decisions. Our survey respondents tell us that the demand for access is increasing for both structured and unstructured data across the globe. Accenture Information Management Services has seen this across its client projects and helped the New York Power Authority bring together different types of enterprise data to allow better analysis.

Information Management as a Key to Competitive Differentiation
When asked what is the most likely driver behind adopting an integrated approach to accessing and analyzing data, more than 60 percent say it is to achieve true competitive differentiation (new markets, more revenue and a means to innovate) rather than to just "stay in the game." When we asked respondents to rank the ways in which information brings business value, "improves access to high-quality information for better analysis and decision making" was clearly the top choice.

Among the most powerful drivers of information management adoption is the need to best serve customers and adapt to changing markets. In our own work with the oil and gas company Galp Energia, Accenture has shown how information management can allow differentiation through better customer service.

Business intelligence, in particular, is seen as a source of differentiation. However, organizations are falling short of their goals in this area currently. More than 60 percent of respondents are barely using business intelligence for differentiation at present.

Harvesting Value from Information Management
Nearly 30 percent of respondents indicate that business intelligence and data warehousing will be afforded significant investment in the next 12-18 months. The focus on using data for advanced analytics echoes Accenture's research on Competing on Analytics.

Though much of future spending might be on back-end technologies, user interfaces are also seen as central to harvesting value from information. More than 80 percent of respondents indicate that portals are already both managed and funded centrally, and a full 100 percent indicate that within the next three years central funding will be achieved.

The opportunity now is for CIOs to build on this capability by offering the ability to work on multiple applications seamlessly through one portal, perhaps even building in business intelligence and analytical capabilities at the portal level. Working with 14 federal ministries of the Belgian Government Accenture helped design, build, maintain and host a portal solution that sets a standard in government electronic services so that, via a single gateway, citizens, businesses and government employees are able to access a range of critical information online.

We believe an enterprise-wide and integrated approach to managing and creating value from an organization's diverse information assets includes:

• All types of data—structured and unstructured, internal and external.
  
  
• The entire information lifecycle—from acquisition to storage to cleansing to integration and, ultimately, analysis.
  
  
• Technology for managing information and ensuring security, governance models, enterprise standards and practices (and the roles and responsibilities associated with these activities).
  
  
• Integrating people, processes and technologies to drive high performance for the long term.

In fact, an enterprise-wide approach is a recurring theme in this research—from information integration to information security. In Accenture's experience, a comprehensive information management strategy enables organizations to maintain a focus on both structured and unstructured data, including not just the toolsets but the supporting disciplines such as governance, security, access, sharing and storage. We are seeing a shift away from the silo approach and a desire to introduce the kind of comprehensive integration and information management capabilities that cultivate a high-performance business.

When Accenture launched Accenture Information Management Services in 2005—a dedicated global practice, drawing on 15 years' experience providing data management, integration and analysis—we declared our vision for successful information management in order to achieve the value from information, competitive differentiation and market advantage. Two years later, it would appear that our vision is being shared by many corporate leaders across the globe.

Learn more about the Accenture CIO Survey