CXOs balance need for new investments in digital technologies to drive innovation and interoperability while addressing the challenges with macroeconomics, IT resourcing and cost inflation. Rimini Street, Inc. is a global provider of enterprise software products and services. It is the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products, and a salesforce partner. A survey was done to show the prospects for digital transformation.
Recently Rimini Street Inc. announced the findings of the of their independent annual censuswide buyers sentiment survey, known as “IT Leaders: The Future Outlook Report 2023,” examining CIOs’ and CTOs’ prospects; IT strategies, initiatives, challenges and focus.
The Rimini Street-sponsored research polled more than 1,000 respondents in total across more than seven industries in the UK, Ireland, the Nordics and the Gulf states. The survey research found IT leaders continuing to prioritize digital transformation and interoperability of technologies to achieve strategic, financial and operational business objectives in 2023.
The report further showed that these respondents had to balance their digital innovation investments against a variety of current economic and industrial challenges affecting their organization. These include talent shortages, supply chain disruptions, macroeconomic cost inflation and geo-political realities, including complex global sanctions and de-globalization.
What were the key survey respondent findings?
- 62% say digital transformation is a high priority in 2023, but among this group, 77% are only in the planning stage of projects and 56% currently do not have a digital transformation project;
- 76% of respondents have heard of composable ERP, and 84% of this group are expected to make investments in composable ERP in 2023;
- 47% feel the increased cost of living has led to the inability to meet salary expectations for new and existing staff;
- 67% want to reduce legacy enterprise application support costs by switching to third-party support.
What did IT leaders reveal about digital transformation?
A majority of IT leaders agree that a digital transformation project is in their near-term roadmap, however, there are mixed sentiments due to scarcity of budget resources, IT skills and labor. In addition to this, there is also a weighing in of possible security and implementation risks associated with embarking on such projects, says 43% of respondents.
The main driver towards making such investments in 2023 is to pivot towards becoming a much more flexible, scalable and agile organization, with a strong movement towards migration to the cloud to allow for composability and compatibility of their existing IT tech enterprise application with software applications that fit their unique business needs.
Respondents strongly believe the adoption of composable ERP strategies should be considered a change management program requiring employee buy-in (47%), that leaders should plan for additional talent and financial resources to support the new ecosystem of technologies (43%).
Why are leaders concerned about return on investment?
While increases in IT budgets for 2023 remain conservative, 44% of IT leaders feel pressure by their board of directors to show increased return on investments for their technology spend.
With a significant portion of IT budget resources allocated to enterprise application software, CIOs and CTOs are reviewing the cost of ownership associated with the purchase and maintenance of enterprise applications, especially increased cost of hiring internal resources and additional contractors to close the gap when vendors fail to provide quality support.
Other main points by respondents noted through the findings of the research include:
- Being locked into an existing enterprise software contract (20%);
- Requirement of unnecessary upgrades to resolve issues (51%);
- Having to reproduce the issue to prove the root cause to the vendor before receiving support (40%).
A majority of IT leaders (67%) seek to reduce the total cost of ownership for existing in the industry, matured enterprise software by switching to third-party support programs, with almost half of participants (48%) looking to outsource support and maintenance services to free up time for their IT teams to work on more strategic, innovation-focused projects.
What are the insights on the talent and skills shortage?
Across the globe, organizations are finding continued challenge in filling the talent and skills shortage while preventing the loss of key staff due to burnout (42%). The increased workload for those remaining signals loss of productivity as they become much more reactionary, “fighting fires” instead of working on projects to optimize and evolve their IT roadmap (46%).
Surveyed respondents of the Rimini Street Inc. study are embracing the new talent acquisition and retention environment by becoming more flexible in their hiring models, including the hiring of talent with less experience and fewer skills, but with a willingness to learn (60%).
Other actions taken to fill the talent gap include cross-training of existing staff (39%), offering unique perks and benefits like a 4-day workweek, and engaging third-party services to provide ongoing or project-based support, application management or outsourcing services (47%).
