Communications and Technology Industry Research

Research from Unisys (News - Alert) Corporation (UIS) reveals gaps between executives' business and IT goals and their estimation of their organizations' targets for achieving their objectives.

 

The study shows that executives are not getting the most from their business initiatives and information technology (IT) investments. They require new approaches to upgrade and modernize their business processes, strategic applications and IT infrastructures, according to UIS.

 

To fill the gaps, Unisys announced the Unisys Modernization Benchmark service. This service allows organizations to benchmark their current business and IT operations against those of their peers, revealing the gaps between their desired goal and their current state. This helps executives focus on those gaps which can have an impact and thus identify the business and technology initiatives to invest in.

 
"Too many IT executives are in a budgetary straitjacket imposed by constricted notions of how IT can support business," stated Dominick Cavuoto, vice president, Global Industries and Worldwide Strategic Services, Unisys.

 

"They're spending 80 percent of their IT budget on infrastructure maintenance and funding innovation only as an afterthought. These strictures have been imposed largely by outmoded views of IT as a cost center, not an investment. The Unisys Modernization Benchmark service helps executives find fresh ways of thinking so they can free IT to enable breakthrough performance gains with low-cost operating models that deliver maximum return on investment,” added Cavuoto.

 

Research says there are gaps between aspiration and execution. In Unisys’ double-blind study for baseline information for the Unisys Modernization Benchmark, 1,200 business and IT executives were surveyed worldwide. They were asked for the most important business objectives they uniformly placed priority on customer-focused and customer-dependent goals, like acquiring new customers, relationships with existing customers, developing new products, growing sales and revenue and also reaching new markets.

Those executive identified 10 capabilities which were all in information and IT investments.

 

The executives were asked to rate their organization capability to execute in every area and where they expect the organization to grow in three years. All this revealed a significant gap between their current readiness and expected performance.

 

62 percent of executives think they will encourage innovation or be market leaders if they support it for three years. Yet 70 percent say they have no support for innovation, or say their capability is moderate.

For IT management practices, 52 percent of executives expect IT to be an investment, yet 72 percent think they currently treat it as a support function to enhance productivity.

67 percent of respondents feel they have integrated collaborative communications with important stakeholders for the next three years, yet only 32 percent feel they have that capability right now.

"The research provides a valuable snapshot of where organizations stand today relative to some significant areas of business and IT management, and affords a valuable tool for other businesses to assess their current states and aspirations," added Cavuoto.

 

"Yet there is no guarantee that those organizations will achieve their objectives as quickly and comprehensively as they hope. We are offering the Unisys Modernization Benchmark as a means to increase the chances of success for enterprise clients. The service can help executives find a way to liberate their business from the shackles of untested assumptions, reestablish their priorities and free IT to take the business in a new direction,” Cavuoto explained.

The Unisys Modernization Benchmark service has a workshop approach. The organization's capabilities are in dimensions like business resilience, collaborative business, IT as a business enabler, green business and business execution.

The Unisys 3D Blueprinting system helps clients execute their plan. The approach allows them to gain visibility into strategy, business processes, applications and IT infrastructure. With the 3D Blueprinting approach, executives create a plan for modernizing the enterprise from business strategy through infrastructure.

Unisys is an information technology services and solutions company for consulting, systems integration, outsourcing and infrastructure services, with enterprise server technology.

 

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