The bulk of business managers and senior executives see their corporate information technology departments more as obstacles to innovation instead of enablers, according to a Forrester Research survey.
Forrester's survey of executives screams business alignment. To wit:
Here's the disconnect between the business and IT exec ratings. It's a convoluted chart, but the short version is that corporate IT can manage costs ok, but little else. For all the enterprise therapy sessions about business alignment there's not a lot of movement.
Sure there's collaboration between the business and IT on back office (46 percent said there was cooperation), but sales and marketing, R&D and product engineering lagged big time. Thirty three percent of sales and marketing execs said IT collaborates with them and 28 percent of R&D and product engineering considered corporate IT a partner. In other words, the stuff attached to revenue sees corporate IT as a barrier.
The Forrester survey points to an IT buying reality: There are more executives calling the shots on technology.
Other takeaways:
Add it up and it's clear that we're going to see more business alignment therapy sessions ahead.