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Red Hat Survey Highlights Shifts in IT-enabled Business Innovation, Changing Role of the CIO

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

It is no surprise that businesses are being transformed by new technologies, especially those that bring more intelligence and mobility to their operations and products. Some companies - known as "Innovation Accelerators"- are driving this transformation by pursuing IT-enabled business innovation as a core strategy throughout their organization, according to the results of the "Business Transformation and the CIO Role" survey announced today by Red Hat, Inc, the world's leading provider of open source solutions.

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The survey of 420 global business leaders, commissioned by Red Hat through Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, found that these Innovation Accelerators (32 percent of survey respondents) are anticipating significant change over the next three years, particularly in how they engage with and learn about customers, as well as in their business models, products and services, and end user processes.

Specifically, Innovation Accelerators are more than twice as likely to invest in the creation of new applications compared to peers in companies where innovation is not a priority (72 percent vs. 34 percent). They are also more likely to focus on revenue generating opportunities with new customer experience strategies (71 percent), business model innovation (69 percent) and service innovation (68 percent). By contrast, companies for which innovation is not a priority will focus more internally on the automation of business processes (70 percent).

The way organizations engage with and understand their customers leads the list of areas that will be changed the most by IT-enabled innovation, with 55 percent of all survey respondents saying it will be changed significantly and 20 percent saying it will be completely transformed (rating it a 10 on a scale of 1-10). Respondents also believe IT-enabled innovation will change the way employees do their work (48 percent say it will be significantly changed; 15 percent say it will be completely transformed); the company's products/services (46 percent say it will be significantly changed; 11 percent project it will be completely transformed); and business models (42 percent expect it will be significantly changed; 13 percent say it will be completely transformed). For Innovation Accelerators, the numbers are significantly higher: 70 percent say their approach to customer engagement and insight will be significantly changed, and 33 percent indicate it will be completely transformed.

These changes translate to a number of specific projects that respondents expect to engage in over the next three years. More than half of survey respondents are planning to automate business processes (67 percent); execute customer experience strategies (66 percent); create new applications (60 percent); and innovate their services (57 percent) and business models (56 percent).

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