Author: Wang Congbin.
This year has been the worst of the last decade, but perhaps the best of the next decade. "We've probably all heard that in the last two years.
According to this year's Gartner Global CIO Agenda Survey, the situation is slowly improving, with the global average IT budget expected to grow by 38%, 27% and 3 in Asia-Pacific8%。After adjusting for inflation, this figure is slightly higher than the previous year's figure of almost 1%.
China's IT budget is expected to grow by 28%, compared to 07% is a significant change, but it is still low compared to the IT budget before '22. Chen Yong, vice president of research at Gartner, said that only in the last two years China's IT budget growth has been lower than that of the world, which is a huge challenge for Chinese CIOs.
Key outputs did not meet expectations
In an economic downturn, business managers will pay more attention to inputs and outputs. Before the pandemic, companies would focus on sales growth as the output target of digitalization and informatization, but after the pandemic, this measure has changed, because many industries have invested in digitalization and will not have significant sales growth.
At this time, many enterprises have also turned their goals to reduce costs and increase efficiency, making it the most important output. According to China's data this year, 24% of enterprises have taken improving operating profits as the first priority, 24% as the second priority, and 16% as the third priority, with a total of 63%.
As some industries begin to recover gradually, 37% of companies have prioritized sales revenue growth this year, but only 53% of the top three priorities combined, ranking fourth.
Although reducing costs, increasing efficiency and increasing sales revenue are key outputs, most companies do not meet the expectations of CEOs. Only 8% of companies exceeded the CEO's expectations, while 54% of the companies fell short of the CEO's expectations. Chen Yong believes that at present, there are not many scenarios that can directly see cost reduction and efficiency increase, and cost reduction is difficult to present in numbers.
Compared with the rise in the status of CIOs during the epidemic, the status of CIOs in enterprises is also showing a downward trend. Chen Yong also suggested that CIOs should pay attention to what CEOs care about most, and then pay attention to whether digital investment can meet the requirements of CEOs.
At the same time, the power of the CIO is also decentralized, and in the identification and trial operation of new technologies, IT and business account for a relatively high proportion of both management, reaching 42% and 50%; In the selection and management of the best business, the leading proportion of IT will be higher; In the development and implementation of digital technology in the business field, the proportion of IT leadership in software development and programming is relatively high, and the proportion of business departments leading in macro and management work will be higher. In terms of security compliance, business departments are more involved in complying with laws and regulations.
On the whole, the driving of new technologies by business units is mainly led by business units, while the integration of new technologies and the operation and maintenance of new technologies are mainly led by business units. Chen Yong said that the reduction of CIO's IT dominance may help enterprises accelerate digitalization.
aiInvestment is increasing, and generative AI is still being explored
This year's technology investment is divided into emerging technologies and all technologies, with emerging technologies also splitting AI and generative AI.
In terms of investment in emerging technologies, AI machine learning still ranks first as last year, with 50% of enterprises already adopting AI technology, 13% adopting it within a year, and 16% adopting it in 2-3 years. The second is low and none, a technology that has risen to second place in recent times, mainly because of the democratization of IT. The third is generative AI, which only 5% of companies have already adopted, but 39% expect to adopt it within a year, 24% expect to adopt it within two years, and 16% expect to adopt it within three years.
The survey also saw that investment in some technologies is declining, such as blockchain, metaverse, and immature technologies such as quantum computing.
In terms of all technology investments, BI ranks first as always, and has reached 87% this year, AI has risen from fourth last year to second, and data centers and ERP are still in a state where they will not increase or decrease investment.
Due to different scenarios, AI applications in China are very different from those in foreign countries. Chen Yong pointed out that China's number one AI application is facial recognition, as well as fraud detection. There are not many real application scenarios of generative AI at present, and traditional enterprises are currently in the process of exploring, and it can be seen that game companies are already using generative AI generation**.
On the one hand, generative AI in China is due to the fact that OpenAI's products cannot be used, and on the other hand, the product maturity of domestic first-class manufacturers is insufficient, and enterprises still need to look at the input-output ratio in new technology investment, because the use of new technologies is not only the cost of product technology, but also equipment costs, personnel costs, etc.
However, the input-output ratio is sometimes difficult to calculate, for example, the e-commerce system has helped increase sales revenue by 20%, and the increase is partly due to the improvement of product quality, product design, or marketing cannot be evaluated, which is a complex problem of "multiple causes and one effect".