Mind the Gap: Insights from Accenture’s Third Global IT Performance Research Study

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See highlights from Accenture’s 2010 High Performance IT research study:

Field research involving more than 220 senior IT executives found that IT organizations that have shown an ability to differentiate their core IT capabilities during the downturn are now positioned to deliver much more value to their companies as they search for business growth.

For the research, Accenture used more than 150 proprietary indicators of high performance across 9 core IT capabilities, ranging from application architecture to workforce management. What do High Performers do well? Our findings show that these organizations:

• have web-enabled 42% more of their customer interactions and 93% more of their suppliers interactions,
  
  
• are 44% more likely to recognize the strategic role IT plays in customer satisfaction,
  
  
• are eight times more likely to consistently measure the benefits realized from strategic IT initiatives,
  
  
• spend 29% more annually on developing and implementing new applications rather than on maintaining existing ones and
  
  
• are twice as likely to view workforce performance as a priority.

Notably, the gap between High Performers and other IT organizations is widening: the delta between High Performers and their peers has grown in both innovation excellence and execution excellence since our last study in 2008.

High Performers that have shown an ability to differentiate their core IT capabilities during the downturn–a period when most organizations were focused primarily on cost-cutting–are now positioned to deliver much more value to their companies as they search for business growth.

The High Performers in our survey have embraced the challenges at hand and created pockets of excellence that show demonstrable results across nine core capabilities:

1. Strategic IT Alignment
   High Performers in our 2010 research are more than three times as likely to deliver IT’s committed value in new products and services and twice as likely to cite IT’s strategic role in improving employee productivity.
   
   
2. IT Governance
   High Performers have shown resiliency in securing new investments, in large part because of their excellence in IT governance and their ability to turn cost savings and efficiency improvements into re-investment in IT that adds value.
   
   
3. Application Architecture
   Definition and evolution of the IT organization’s target application architecture is a critical distinction between companies identified as 2010 High Performers and those that are not. These IT leaders emphasize the importance of a target application architecture centered on three objectives:
   
   
   • Scheduling and implementing regular refreshes of the application architecture.
     
     
   • Proactively applying architecture principles in all initiatives: The importance of avoiding duplication in their application portfolios.
     
     
4. Information management
   High Performers, not surprisingly, are more evolved in their information management practices than other IT organizations.
   
   
   • They are more than twice as likely, for example, to have developed target data architectures and created effective business intelligence and analytics capabilities as well as data governance.
     
     
5. Service Management & Operations
   IT organizations are changing the way they provide and manage IT services, and High Performers are significantly further along the journey toward centralized, fully virtualized environments.
   
   
   • Having rationalized and simplified their IT for a leaner infrastructure, High Performers provide IT services via a standard, well-defined services-based catalog at twice the rate of other IT organizations.
     
     
6. Solutions Delivery
   High Performers are significantly ahead in extracting benefits from integrating business processes, information and IT systems.
   
   
   • For example, they are six times more likely to provide real-time visibility into processes and four times more likely to provide real-time dashboards and alert systems.
     
     
7. Workforce & Resource Management
   IT organizations are investing in developing leadership while focusing on setting clear IT direction and priorities. Moreover, they strive to assign the right people to the right role, and reward them according to set objectives tied to business outcomes.
   
   
8. Information and Technology Security
   High Performers demonstrate leadership and agility in deploying comprehensive information and technology security strategies.
   
   
   • High Performers are three times as likely to coordinate security governance with lines of business, as opposed to simply sharing security policies with them.
     
     
9. Outsourcing
   Outsourcing is more than just a way to lower costs. High Performing IT organizations strategically use outsourcing to gain access to critical IT skills, improve their agility and flexibility, increase the effectiveness of business processes, and lower the total cost of ownership of applications and infrastructure.

The widening performance gap between High Performers and other IT organizations should serve as a wake-up call for the underperformers to improve core capabilities – or risk being marginalized by business leadership.

CIOs have the power to close the performance gap and turn a vicious cycle into a virtuous cycle of performance improvement. Although there is no universal formula for becoming a High Performer, our report outlines a path that organizations can follow, regardless of their current state.

IT Execution: Define the Baseline, the Desired State, and the Gaps between the Two

IT Agility: Mold IT to the Needs of the Business

IT Innovation: Position IT as a Strategic Asset for Competitive Advantage

By thinking big, starting small and scaling fast–a common refrain among innovators–CIOs can build credibility in the C-suite and drive sustainable business value throughout the organization.

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Learn more about Accenture's High Performance IT research program