Product/Technology

Under product/technology related issues, the thing that keeps most IT managers awake in the nights is the trouble of deploying new products and technologies. Forty two percent of the CIOs raised this as their biggest concern, and it was equally visible across companies of all sizes. However, the concern was more pronounced amongst companies with low IT budgets of under Rs 1 crore. In fact, a majority of IT managers who used a mix of both in-house and outsourced IT manpower and having between six to 25 people raised it as their top concern. The majority of CIOs who raised this as their top issue were from the manufacturing segment. Those from the government and the other IT-services segment followed this. Plus, this issue comes from a very experienced set of IT managers. Forty seven percent of CIOs who had more than 15 years of experience and 37 percent of those with 10-15 years raised this as their biggest concern. 

The other two concerns in challenge one were doing hardware and software upgrades, and developing software in-house. In challenge two, the biggest concern was related to network security and spam. This was followed by hardware maintenance and ensuring the availability and reliability of the IT infrastructure. 

We got interesting responses on how IT managers were handling the first challenge of deploying new products and technologies. Many seemed to find it more convenient to outsource the job to vendors, consultants, etc. So outsourcing is not just about call centers alone! Then there was the wise lot, who deployed new products and applications only after evaluating their needs, understanding their requirements, mapping them with the right technology, defining a roadmap and finally implementing it. Some IT managers even felt that implementing ERP was the answer, and were, therefore, either in the process of implementing SAP or some other ERP package to automate their business processes. This did come as a surprise, especially when everyone is crying that technology is not the answer to business problems. We do hope they've worked out the ROI for their implementations. None had an IT budget of less than Rs 1 crore. It was either Rs 1-10 crore or more. 

Solutions to deploying new products/applications