Business priorities
For IT leaders, their top business priorities for the year is put as a direct question, but for IT professionals this was phrased as what they think the priorities should be. Here we present two snapshots of the data. The first is a view of the top business priority, the second a combined rank of priorities rated in the top three.
Rank of number one priorities:
| Leaders | % | Professionals | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business transformation | 26 | Business transformation | 19 |
| Operational efficiencies | 15 | Remote and hybrid working | 11 |
| Business continuity planning | 12 | Business continuity planning | 10 |
| Replacing legacy systems | 9 | Replacing legacy systems | 10 |
| CRM | 7 | Ret/reward high performers | 10 |
| Remote and hybrid working | 7 | Staff engagement and wellbeing | 10 |
| Regulatory compliance | 6 | Operational efficiencies | 7 |
| Ret/reward high performers | 5 | CRM | 5 |
| Staff engagement and wellbeing | 5 | Implementing sustainability policies | 5 |
| Recruitment | 4 | Regulatory compliance | 5 |
| Other | 3 | Other | 5 |
| Implementing sustainability policies | 2 | Recruitment | 4 |
Combined ranking of business priorities that appeared in the top three:
| Leaders | % | Professionals | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business transformation | 50 | Business transformation | 37 |
| Operational efficiencies | 50 | Staff engagement and wellbeing | 36 |
| Remote and hybrid working | 32 | Operational efficiencies | 34 |
| Replacing legacy systems | 31 | Remote and hybrid working | 33 |
| Business continuity planning | 30 | Replacing legacy systems | 31 |
| Staff engagement and wellbeing | 24 | Ret/reward high performers | 31 |
| CRM | 22 | Business continuity planning | 23 |
| Regulatory compliance | 15 | CRM | 16 |
| Ret/reward high performers | 13 | Implementing sustainability policies | 16 |
| Recruitment | 9 | Regulatory compliance | 15 |
| Implementing sustainability policies | 8 | Recruitment | 12 |
| Other | 8 | Other | 7 |
Business transformation has consistently been a top priority in this survey - nearly always followed by operational efficiencies. Where differences first appear they are explainable - operational efficiency should clearly feature much more highly for IT leaders than IT professionals, and so it does.
Perhaps in other areas we should see more parity - IT professionals had staff engagement and wellbeing as their second most important priority, but this is lower for managers. Retention and reward of high performing staff was a much higher priority for IT professionals than for IT leaders.
A small noteworthy difference: professionals rate the importance of implementing sustainability policies more highly than leaders whichever way we cut the data.
