Growth Predictions For IT Investments

A new national study conducted by The Gantry Group, LLC, Software Development IT Governance Expenditures Trends, reveals that a company’s annual budget for these solutions and services, on average, will grow to $1.2 million in the next 12 months. Companies will increase allocations in their budgets for key solution areas: 6% for Portfolio Management, 4% for Project Management, 3% for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), 2% for integrated Project Portfolio Management (PPM), and 2% for Requirements Management.

Respondents reported that within the next 12 months their organizations plan to implement solutions for PPM (25%) and Process Workflow Management (20%). Companies show a strong preference for third party on-premise solutions for all categories of IT investment with the exception of demand management for which custom in-house solutions are preferred.

According to the study, respondents prefer third party solutions to outsourced services primarily because they want to maintain control over data quality, privacy, and security (48%), and believe that they will also derive greater control over solution access and performance (45%) as well as improved integration with existing systems.

The study solicited feedback from C-level IT executives and Vice Presidents (50%), IT/Development Directors (18%) and Managers (12%). 66% of respondents have responsibility for IT/Product Development, Program Management or IT Governance. Nearly 25% of respondents came from companies with 5,000 or more employees, while 27% came from companies with 1,000 – 5,000 employees and 28% came from companies with 250 – 1,000 employees.

The study revealed the following additional findings:

• The key metrics that companies use to determine the success of their development IT governance solutions are alignment of IT investments with corporate objectives (52%), followed by expected ROI (45%), and alignment of IT projects with corporate objectives (44%).
• The majority of respondents believe that their development IT governance solution deployments have benefited their organizations through improved alignment of both IT investment (52%) and projects (41%) with corporate objectives.
• Respondents are least satisfied with their deployed solutions for PPM, PLM, Time Management and Resource Management.
• Dissatisfaction with development and IT governance solutions arises primarily from poor employee adoption (50%), poor integration with the company’s infrastructure (50%), and an increase in process complexity and workflows (44%).

Gantry Group is a strategic consulting firm that guides technology based solution providers to build offerings that capitalize on urgent market needs and challenges. For the past decade, Gantry Group’s customer satisfaction, primary market research and ROI/TCO measurement services have armed the world’s leading technology vendors with targeted market intelligence to support their strategic business decisions and inform their solution roadmaps.

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