DACH CIOs Focus on Digital Initiatives and Operational Excellence

29 percent of CIOs in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (the DACH region) regard digital initiatives as their top business priority, according to Gartner. They cite the drive for operational excellence as their second priority, a deviation from global results, where driving revenue and business growth comes second.

“Our survey results show that DACH CIOs take more ownership in digitizing operations and efficiency, instead of focusing on business growth and revenue,“ said Bettina Tratz-Ryan, research vice president at Gartner. “This is due to the fact that CIOs in the DACH region often lack the resources to drive and enable true business transformation. DACH CIOs are involved in enabling the design of new business models but do not lead these efforts.“

The 2019 Gartner CIO Agenda Survey gathered data from more than 3,000 CIO respondents in 89 countries and all major industries. In the DACH region, 118 CIO respondents were asked for their input. IT budgets in the region increased on average by 2.7 percent in 2019, 0.6 percent less than in EMEA. This partly explains the focus of on core system improvements that modernize and upgrade existing platforms and infrastructure. Those measures decrease costs and improve the efficiency and scalability of digital initiatives.

Overall, resources are a major pain point for DACH CIOs. 51 percent cite insufficient IT-business resources as their most significant barrier to achieving their objectives. Not far behind is a change-blocking business culture at 46 percent. Further, 35 percent of respondents state that insufficient depth and breadth of digital skills are slowing their digital transformation strategies.

34 percent of DACH CIOs regard AI as a game-changing technology for their organizations, followed by data analytics (19%) and cloud (15%). When asked for their top use case for AI, 42 percent cited the use of chatbots as conversational agents.

“Our survey shows that DACH CIOs are actually more likely to invest in chatbots than global CIOs are, and there are already some interesting use cases in the region,“ said Tratz-Ryan. “We often see chatbots in customer management, and some banks have already developed chatbots to handle other tasks such as small money transfers.“

Digital business is one of the core investment area for DACH CIOs. 46 percent plan to increase their investment in digital business initiatives. Core system improvements and transformations, such as legacy modernizations, are almost as important (40 percent).

“Digital business initiatives and core system improvements might seem like independent areas, but they belong together. Investing in digital transformation means that organizational silos need to become connected in a digital value chain and, for that to happen, the core systems need to become more agile and interactive. This is especially the case with the advanced operational technologies and the machines and sensors used in industry 4.0 scenarios,“ Tratz-Ryan said.