Synopsis
This report presents the findings from a survey of 906 medium-sized enterprises regarding their approach to Information & Communications Technology (ICT) procurement. The survey investigates the way that medium-sized enterprises like to purchase technology, as well as the major IT and business objectives influencing their IT investment strategies.
Scope
Provides insights into medium-sized enterprises’ preferred buying approaches.
Comprehend the business objectives that medium-sized enterprises are looking to achieve through their IT investment strategy.
Appreciate the IT objectives that medium-sized enterprises are looking to achieve through their IT investment strategy.
Understand the factors that are influencing medium-sized enterprises’ decision to select an ICT provider.
Understand which organisational roles influence ICT purchasing decisions and signing off budgets.
Summary
Why was the report written?
To highlight the criteria on which medium-sized enterprises select their ICT providers as well as the roles which have influence while making ICT purchasing decisions.
What is the current market landscape and what is changing?
Medium-sized enterprises have an optimistic approach towards IT investments, and their preference towards hosted services is slowly gaining traction.
What are the key drivers behind recent market changes?
Medium-sized enterprises are gradually shifting to the hosted model as they realize the importance of cloud solutions to boost their agility & scalability, and improve customer responsiveness.
What makes this report unique and essential to read?
Kable Market Research Market Research has invested significant resources in order to interview CIOs and IT managers about their IT Procurement. Very few IT analyst houses will have interviewed 900+ ICT decision makers in the medium-sized enterprises in H2 2012.
Reasons To Buy
Medium-sized enterprises have a higher preference for buying technologies from local resellers compared to national resellers, as they tend to be in a better position to provide timely support services and also possess vertical expertise.
Investment in security products and services is imperative for medium-sized enterprises as any vulnerability in their existing systems can cause huge financial losses for their customers and damage their reputation. It is clear from the survey that X% of medium-sized enterprises already invested in security technologies.
Medium-sized enterprises are continuously looking to streamline their operations and achieve greater efficiency to support business growth. This is evident from the survey, where these enterprises are placing utmost importance on the business objective of raising efficiency, assigning it the highest average rating of X on a scale of 1 to 4.
Increasing competition and deteriorating revenue growth are forcing medium-sized enterprises to embrace leading edge technologies such as cloud computing, mobile services, and social media in order to reduce their operating costs and improve time to market for their new products.
According to Kable Market Research’s survey, X% of medium-sized enterprises state that they have an ICT infrastructure which is somewhat complex, with several hardware manufacturers, operating systems, databases, applications, and other elements, whilst X% describe their ICT infrastructure as ‘very complex’ with multiple instances of different technology types.
Table of Contents
1 Enterprise ICT investment trends
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Survey demographics
1.3 ICT budget changes
1.4 ICT investment priorities
2 ICT procurement trends
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Purchasing channels
2.3 Business objectives influencing IT investment strategy
2.4 IT objectives influencing IT investment strategy
2.5 ICT provider selection
2.6 Influencers
2.7 ICT infrastructure environment complexity
3 Summary
3.1 Medium-sized enterprises are eager to gain business agility at lower cost by increasing their adoption of hosted services
4 Appendix
4.1 Definitions
4.2 Further reading
4.3 Contact the authors
List Of Tables
Table 1: Medium-sized enterprises – ICT survey geographic breakdown
Table 2: Medium-sized enterprises – ICT survey industry breakdown
Table 3: Recent and expected ICT budget changes among medium-sized enterprises
Table 4: Current and future investment priorities of medium-sized enterprises across core technologies
Table 5: Medium-sized enterprises’ preferred approach to buying technologies
Table 6: Business objectives which influence medium-sized enterprises’ IT investment strategy
Table 7: IT objectives which influence medium-sized enterprises’ IT investment strategy
Table 8: Factors influencing medium-sized enterprises’ decision to choose an ICT provider
Table 9: Influence of organizational roles in making ICT purchasing decisions and signing off budgets
Table 10: Complexity of the ICT infrastructure in medium-sized enterprises
List Of Figures
Figure 1: Medium-sized enterprises – ICT survey geographic breakdown
Figure 2: Medium-sized enterprises – ICT survey industry breakdown
Figure 3: Recent and expected ICT budget changes among medium-sized enterprises
Figure 4: Current and future investment priorities of medium-sized enterprises across core technologies
Figure 5: Medium-sized enterprises’ preferred approach to buying technologies
Figure 6: Business objectives which influence medium-sized enterprises’ IT investment strategy
Figure 7: IT objectives which influence medium-sized enterprises’ IT investment strategy
Figure 8: Factors influencing medium-sized enterprises’ decision to choose an ICT provider
Figure 9: Influence of organizational roles in making ICT purchasing decisions and signing off budgets
Figure 10: Complexity of the ICT infrastructure in medium-sized enterprises
