Almost two-thirds (63%) of organizations now allow technology to be managed outside the IT department, a shift that brings with it both significant business advantages and increased privacy and security risks, reveals the 2019 Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO Survey - the largest IT leadership survey in the world, with over 3,600 responses across 108 countries.

When IT spend is managed away from the direct control of the CIO companies are twice as likely to have multiple security areas exposed, and more likely to become a victim of a major cyber-attack.

In an age where anyone with a smartphone and credit card can set up an IT system, there are both incredible opportunities and major risks. Those enterprises that get the balance right between innovation and governance will be the winners,” said Albert Ellis, CEO of Harvey Nash. “At the same time, boards are asking their CIO and technology team to prioritize automation of jobs. How organizations adapt to automation will increasingly become a priority, and many are not at all ready.”

Steve Bates, Global Leader, CIO Advisory Centre of Excellence, KPMG International, said, “There is no longer business strategy and technology strategy, it's simply strategy with technology driving it. This research clearly shows that organizations putting technology in the hands of value-creators and connecting the front, middle and back office are winning in the market. The future of IT is a customer obsessed, well governed, connected enterprise.”

Digital leaders perform better

• Digital leaders, which are organizations that consider themselves `very effective' or `extremely effective' at using digital technologies to advance their business strategies, performed better than their competitors on every aspect surveyed:

These aspects included time to market (53% vs 34% for the rest), customer experience (65% vs 49%), revenue growth (55% vs 43%) and profitability in the last year (50% vs 37%).

• Digital leaders are also more likely to introduce `major new changes to products and services' in the next three years (55% vs 39% for the rest), and focus on making money - 76% of CEOs in digital leader organizations want their technology projects to `make' rather than `save money', compared to 58% for the rest.

Gender diversity initiatives are failing big tech

• 74% of IT leaders feel their diversity and inclusion initiatives within their teams are at most moderately successful, and there has been only minimal growth in women on tech teams, 22% this year compared to 21% last year, and no change in the percentage of female technology leaders at 12%.

First signs of Quantum Computing

• Although Quantum Computing Quantum computing is the use of quantum-mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement to perform computation. is at such an early stage, 4% (107 global organizations) have implemented Quantum Computing to at least some degree - with big pharmaceuticals, financial services and energy organizations making bets in this area.

• A fifth (22%) of organizations implementing Quantum Computing were based in the UK, followed by 19% in the US, and 7% for both Australia and the Republic of Ireland.

IT leaders reporting budget increases - highest for 15 years

• More technology leaders reported increases in IT budgets under their control than at any time in the last 15 years.

• The jump in those reporting increases (from 49% to 55%) is the largest seen, with the one exception of 2010, when organizations were still clawing their way out of the global recession.

• For technology projects where the CEO prefers to `save money' almost half (45%) of respondents report budget increases compared to just 38% last year, suggesting many CIOs are investing to save, for instance through automation.

To download the report please visit kpmg.kz web-site: https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/kz/pdf/2019/09/CIO-Survey_2019_ENG.pdf