New study finds most CIOs are cloud-ready, but integration is proving challenging

As the pressure to deliver increased flexibility, greater agility and faster implementation continues to rise, CIOs are focusing on building digital modernisation programs that enable them to deliver on the organisation’s strategic agenda. However, integration of systems is proving to be a major stumbling block.

This was one of the key findings from a recent CIO survey commissioned by Objective Corporation to better understand the challenges CIOs in the public sector and regulated industries face.

We conducted in-depth interviews with a number of CIOs to uncover the key challenges their organisations face when it comes to managing information, and how they plan to address these over the coming months and years.

The findings of this survey are summarised in a new insight paper “How CIOs are Taming the Information Sprawl” which you can download here.

The majority of CIOs are cloud-ready, but integration is proving challenging

The pandemic has had a dramatic and lasting impact on the way we work. 70% of CIOs we spoke to reported it had accelerated the adoption of new technology, and 65% felt it had changed the way they engaged with their people. There was also a consensus that remote working is here to stay, with the majority of organisations expecting their people to come to the office 2–3 days per week.

In light of these changes, many public sector organisations are making the move to the cloud. And they’re in good company. It’s estimated that over 60% of all corporate data is stored in the cloud in 2022 and this figure is growing at 36% annually.

Over 95% of CIOs we spoke to are either in the cloud or planning to move to the cloud, and there were a number of reasons for this shift. 37% were looking to create business value and savings, while 41% wanted more flexible and agile solutions that were easy to implement and maintain.

Functionality and usability equally important

With more people accessing applications remotely, ease of use has grown in importance. But there was consensus among the CIOs that both functionality and usability were equally important, and they weren’t willing to compromise on either.

Historically, a common way to achieve this balance has been to customise the software to create a “perfect” fit for business requirements. However, this approach is now largely avoided by the CIOs we surveyed, due to both initial and ongoing costs, and maintenance overheads.

Integration issues leading to low data quality and poor oversight

Integration is another piece of the puzzle that is proving to be challenging. Integration is vital for organisations to get right if they are to fulfil their promise of providing better end-to-end processes and outstanding online services to citizens. But there are many barriers CIOs face in this area including:

• a lack of standardised integration methodology or platform across the organisation;
• legacy on-premise systems that make integration cumbersome and costly; and
• information silos.

This is leading to poor data quality and a lack of control and oversight over their information.

These were just some of the insights uncovered in our CIO survey. If you’re interested in learning more about the challenges facing CIOs in the public sector and regulated industries, download our insight paper: How CIOs are Taming the Information Sprawl.