The constant challenges facing NZ CIOs

By Divina Paredes | Monday, May 10 2010

Cost reduction remains top concern, followed by staff issues, reports IDC.

Controlling/reducing costs, recruiting and retaining skilled staff and meeting users’ expectations have been the top challenges facing New Zealand CIOs in the past two years, IDC reports.

The difference, with this year’s report however, lies in the ranking of these criteria, as revealed in the latest Australia and New Zealand's Forecast for Management Survey.

While cost reduction retains the top rank at 26.7 percent, recruiting and retaining skilled staff (11.8 percent) makes it to number two this year. In 2009, staff issues occupied the third slot, after meeting users’ expectations.

“I suspect that all organisations will have more of a concern with staff retention this year as their work programmes ramp and the IT professional market opens up,” says Peter Macaulay, principal end user practice, IDC New Zealand.

The results for this country were based on responses from 121 heads of ICT in New Zealand, who were interviewed as part of IDC’s annual global report. The respondents, coming from companies with 99 to 500-plus staff, were asked to name their top three challenges.

For this year, the other top of mind concerns for CIOs, based on their order of importance following the top three concerns, are:
• Migrating to new technology platforms
• IT alignment with business direction
• Developing effective IT business cases
• Keeping abreast of new technology
• Management of change/migration
• Reskilling IT staff/staff development
• Organising and utilising data/business intelligence
• Telecommunications and IT convergence
• Managing the network/data communications.