2015 CIO Agenda: A China Perspective

The 2015 Gartner CIO Survey results clearly show that digitalization has moved to center stage. Business and public-sector organizations and their CIOs must "flip" leadership practices to deliver on the digital promise. This research explores the CIO agenda for China.

Key Findings

• Digitalization presents huge opportunities and very significant risks to any organization. 78% of CIOs in China agree that the existing risk management practices are not keeping up with the new and higher level of risks.
• Although China GDP growth rate will slow down to around 7%, the IT budget at enterprises in China will increase by 8.5% in 2015 — one of the highest IT budget increases of any country in the world.
• 97% of Chinese enterprises are using IT cost and service level to measure the performance of IT, while less than one-third of them are using finance or nonfinance value, or innovation rate.
• Cloud, mobile and analytics are continuously ranked in the top five IT spending priorities among CIOs in China. A very high number have set up a "mobile first" strategy while developing both customer-facing and employee-facing solutions.
• Compared with their global peers, CIOs in China spend more time with boards of directors and less time with customers, and have a deputy in their IT organization.

Recommendations

• Change the risk management practice to keep up the new, higher-level risk in digital world.
• With the high increase of IT budget, keep focus on spending priorities in both IT core renovation and digital technologies.
• Focus more on bringing value to business, rather than cutting IT cost.
• While keeping focus on cloud, mobile and analytics, investigate the opportunities that leading-edge technologies bring.
• Spend more time with customers so that IT can help the business better engage customers.

Analysis

Every year, Gartner surveys the membership of its Executive Programs to expose key priorities, opportunities and threats facing its members across the globe. Of the 2,810 respondents to the 2015 Gartner CIO Survey, 82 came from China. The survey results clearly showed that, as digital opportunities and threats pervade every aspect of our businesses and governments, the IT and digital agenda for each country, industry and enterprise is becoming more and more unique. This research explores the CIO agenda for 2015 in China.

Business Context

Digitalization Is Creating New and Higher Levels of Risk

While digitalization is creating opportunities to the business, it is also creating new and higher levels of risk (see Figure 1). According to the survey results, 89% of CIOs globally and 90% in China agree. In China, 78% of CIOs agree that the existing risk management practices are not keeping up with the new and higher level of risks in a more digital world. This number is much higher than the global average of 69%. This indicates that Chinese CIOs should work with their enterprise and IT risk leaders to adapt the risk management practices, to make sure they are keeping up with the fast-changing digital world. Gartner finds that many enterprises in China do not have a dedicated role inside IT organization in charge of risk management, especially digital risk management. It is recommended that those enterprises set up such a role, so that risk management can be taken care of more professionally.

Figure 1. The Changing Nature of Risk, China vs. Global

Source: Gartner (January 2015)

CIOs Have the Opportunity to Be Digital Leaders

While globally 47% of CIOs believe they have the digital leadership responsibility for their business, only 33% of CIOs in China do (see Figure 2). This indicates that most CIOs in China are still seeing themselves as traditional CIOs taking care of traditional IT responsibilities (such as to support the business process running), and letting other senior executives take the digital leadership roles. CIOs in China should be more proactive and devote themselves to the digital world, so that they can demonstrate their value to the business.

Figure 2. Distribution of Digital Leadership Responsibility

Numbers may not total 100% due to rounding.
Source: Gartner (January 2015)

Flipping Information and Technology Leadership

The Nexus Has Moved to Center Stage

Three of the top five technology investment priorities from the 2015 CIO survey are what Gartner calls nexus forces — cloud, analytics and mobile — while two of five are IT core renovation priorities (see Figure 4). CIOs in China have the same top five priorities as their global peers with a slightly different order. This probably means that CIOs in China are keeping up with global technology trends, and are focusing on the same technology priorities that global CIOs are.

Table 1. Top Technology Priorities for 2015, China vs. Global

Source: Gartner (January 2015)

Evidence

¹ 2013 Gartner Consumer Backbone Survey: In August 2013, Gartner conducted a consumer study among 21,514 respondents across eight countries: the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Japan, China and Brazil. Respondents ranged from 18 through 74 years old, with quotas applied within each country based on gender, age, region and income. Weightings were applied such that the results are generally representative of the respective national populations, with the exclusion of some very low-income segments in emerging markets (for example, annual household income of less than 25,000 yuan in China or 7,500 reais in Brazil). ¹

₁ This document and all the documents in this special report are primarily informed by the 2015 Gartner CIO Survey. This survey was conducted during June, July and August 2014, and received responses from 2,810 CIOs in 84 countries and all major industries, representing approximately $12.1 trillion in revenue/public-sector budgets and $397 billion in IT spending. ₁