IT’s ongoing challenges

The most recent survey results confirm the persistence of two trends facing IT leaders: increasing demand for IT to support the organization’s digital goals and the function’s persistently ineffective performance on core IT tasks. ² Ninety-three percent of respondents say their companies have pursued at least one technology-related transformation in the past two years, roughly the same share as said so in the previous survey. Companies’ digital achievements may be nascent, but their aspirations are remarkably high. Among respondents whose organizations have pursued digitization, most report that they are working toward an integrated or fully digital operating model: 85 percent say they want their organizations to be digitally converted (that is, technology is delivered at scale by both digital and core IT teams that work under a single operating model) or fully digital. But only 18 percent say they are there now (Exhibit 1).

With such lofty goals, the pressure is on IT to deliver more effectively than before. But while the results suggest that companies are doing better on many digital activities, such as e-commerce and analytics, they also indicate that IT functions are struggling to keep up with overall demand, particularly in the main areas of IT delivery (Exhibit 2).

For example, just more than half of respondents rate their IT organizations as somewhat or very effective at delivering projects on time and within budget, roughly the same share as said so in the previous survey. And for leading IT delivery and operations—the activity that respondents most often rate as effective—the share of respondents reporting effectiveness declined since the previous survey. Another area of decline is evaluating IT’s performance. Only 44 percent say their IT organizations are effective at evaluating their own performance, down from 55 percent the year before.