IT Hiring, Budgets In 2015: 7 Telling Stats
30% of companies plan to expand IT staff next year, while 74% expect more demand for IT resources. How do your plans stack up?
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Eighteen percentage points.
How you feel about that figure will say something about how you feel about your IT strategy and plans for 2015.
In our Outlook 2015 survey, 18 percentage points is the difference between the share of tech professionals who see rising demand for IT inside their companies (74%) and those who expect their companies to actually increase IT spending (56%).
The takeaway: A sizable number of companies think they can cope with rising demand for IT without increasing spending.
An even larger percentage of survey respondents think that they can meet rising demand without adding IT people. Just 30% of the companies represented in our survey expect to have larger IT staffs in the coming year.
This optimism isn't irrational, of course -- doing more with less is what productivity gains are all about.
But today's rising IT demand isn't just about project volume -- generating 500 BI reports in the coming year instead of 450 this year. It's about IT doing entirely new things, the kind of creative work that doesn't just lower costs but also helps companies grow. It's about mobile apps that build new customer ties, data analysis that spots new opportunities, technology-powered services that drive new revenue.
No doubt some of today's technologies -- such as improved automation that allows for lights-out, remotely managed, highly virtualized data centers -- will eliminate some IT jobs. Virtualization continues to let IT organizations spend less time manipulating physical boxes. But as Choice Hotels International CIO Todd Davis told us recently, increased complexity in the data center also has made top-flight infrastructure professionals among the hardest IT pros to find.
And Choice Hotels offers a great example of a company investing in IT -- including people -- in order to grow. Davis is expanding his IT staff about 20%, adding 100 people, mostly in the Phoenix area. Improved mobile reservation tools, reservation system upgrades to meet international expansion, and moves to cloud platforms all tie directly to growth. "We're looking for people who can bring new thought to the table as we push into new markets and come up with creative ways to address our technology needs," Davis said.
How about your company -- are you among the 56% of companies that will increase their IT budgets to meet 2015 goals? Or the 33% staying flat, or the 11% cutting?
Perhaps you plan to "self-fund" innovation, walking that tightrope between lowering "run-the-business" IT operation costs while increasing "change-the-business" new development projects.
Or maybe you'll consciously plan to do less with less -- put a lid on IT project demands, and eliminate activities IT used to do.
Or maybe your company's strategy for meeting rising IT demand sounds like something inspired by an Elizabeth Gilbert novel: "Cut, Pray, Stall."
Our Outlook 2015 survey lets you compare your tech priorities and budgeting and staffing plans with those of your peers. We also delve into how much business units are setting their own IT spending agendas. Click for a look ahead.
• The IT hiring picture looks fairly consistent with recent years: 30% expanding staff, 35% filling openings, 27% frozen (no layoffs but not filling slots), and just 8% cutting
• 23% see demand staying the same, while only 3% see it decreasing. This demand is similar to that of the past few years
• Heading into 2009, however, demand for IT did plunge -- only 44% saw rising demand for IT projects, as companies saw growth opportunities shrivel
Really? Are these the shadow IT deniers, or are these 28% so disciplined with tech spending that all of it gets controlled centrally? The rest fall into two groups:
• 36% say business units have official tech budgets outside the IT organization
• An equal share, 36%, say business units don't officially have tech budgets, but they know such spending is happening
The only reason to fear tech spending driven by business units instead of IT is if IT could help business units spend more wisely. IT might steer business units toward technology that integrates more effectively, for example, or they might negotiate with tech vendors better or buy technology that serves other business needs as well.
Most IT shops seem comfortable they're getting that kind of say. Among those with tech spending outside of IT:
• 21% have pervasive IT involvement
• 49% say IT gets involved where it's needed
• 27% wait for business units' invitation
Those flashy projects like mobile apps, Internet of things, big data analytics? Get in line behind the nuts and bolts of security and upgrading network infrastructure (25% put that among the top two priorities).
• 71% consider security a significant tech priority, while 41% put it among the top two priorities. That's No. 1 in both cases, in a landslide
• Upgrading network infrastructure lands at No. 2, with 49% considering it a significant priority and 25% saying it's among the top two priorities
• Improving analytics is a close third behind network infrastructure: 47% say it's a significant priority
Tech pros haven't jumped on the robot bandwagon yet. It raises an interesting question: Will only a small segment of industries be affected by the growing improvement in robotics, or is IT not sufficiently plugged into this area to help drive this trend?
• Just 3% consider robots or increased automation as very important, and another 12% consider it important
• By comparison, 54% consider data analytics important or very important, and 44% put mobile applications in one of those categories
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