Trends and priorities for business and IT executives around the world
The 2020 CGI Client Global Insights present the findings from our one-on-one interviews with 1,447 executives across the industries and geographies we serve, with the interviews split nearly 50-50 between the periods before and after the pandemic declaration. The unique timing of these strategic conversations provides insights into how business and IT priorities are evolving rapidly.
This year, leaders indicate a continued focus on meeting customer and citizen expectations with an increasing demand for agility, automation and analytics.
- INDUSTRY TRENDS
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Top trends by impact 1. Becoming digital for customers/citizens 2. IT modernization 3. Optimizing operations 4. Cost/budget pressure 5. Cybersecurity
Meeting customers’ digital needs continues as top trend
Becoming digital to meet customer and citizen expectations is the top trend across industries in 2020 as it was in 2019. However, cost control/budget pressure and optimizing operations both rise in impact compared to last year. Cybersecurity lessens in impact.
Pandemic impacts: In interviews held after the pandemic declaration, executives see a higher impact for cybersecurity as a trend than they do for cost control.
- BUSINESS PRIORITIES
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Top business priorities by importance 1. Customer/citizen experience 2. Becoming digital for customers/citizens 3. Optimizing operations 4. IT modernization 5. Agile supply chain
Customer experience is new top business priority
Executives indicate an increasing focus on the customer experience as well as an emerging priority for supply chain agility. For commercial executives, business agility is the third highest priority; however, government leaders do not cite it. The top constraint to achieving these priorities is now culture change and change management, replacing cost/budget pressure.
Pandemic impacts: In interviews held after the pandemic declaration, the number of executives citing the agile supply chain is much higher.
- IT PRIORITIES
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Top IT priorities by importance 1. Becoming digital for customers/citizens 2. IT modernization 3. Cybersecurity 4. Cloud delivery models 5. Regulation
Becoming digital is new top IT priority
In 2020, becoming a digital organization rises as the top IT priority ahead of IT modernization this year. Cybersecurity and cloud delivery also rise as priorities.
Pandemic impacts: For interviews after the pandemic declaration, cybersecurity and cloud delivery models rise in importance.
DIGITIZATION AND AGILITY
This year, 12% of executives say they are seeing results from enterprise digital strategies, up from 10% in 2019. Those organizations achieving results from digital strategies have several common characteristics.
% producing results from enterprise digital strategies
16%
Use of substantial managed services
27%
Implementation of enhanced automation
29%
Highly agile business models
Globally, 81% of executives say they need to evolve their business model for digitization, and 4% say that evolution is complete. Additionally, 18% of executives indicate their business model is highly agile when it comes to addressing digitization (a score of 8-10, with 10 high) compared to 14% in 2019.
Analytics tops digital initiatives and innovation investments
When it comes to top digital initiatives, analytics is most frequently mentioned (74%), followed by employee productivity (46%) and automation/robotics (42%). In the three year-view, analytics also continues as the top planned innovation investment (70%), followed by cybersecurity (66%) and agile IT (45%).
IT MANAGED SERVICES
Interest in substantial managed services rises after pandemic declaration
This year we asked executives to share the reasons for using managed services. The most common feedback is to save costs and maintain control. For those executives interviewed after the pandemic declaration, their planned use of substantial managed application services shows a marked increase.
% planning to leverage substantial managed applications in 3 years
2020 post pandemic declaration (42%)
2020 prior to pandemic declaration (35%)
2019 (34%)
Business and IT Alignment
For the third year, business and IT executives interviewed ranked their satisfaction with their own IT organizations based on the 10 key attributes of a world-class IT organization, providing a comparative view of business and IT satisfaction both within and across industries.
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