Risk Aversion Means Less Funding For Strategic Initiatives: Study

However, the poor economy has led to a decrease in funding for large, strategic initiatives and there is more aversion to risk associated with such projects, even though deployment of solutions such as enterprise content management (ECM) could help meet those priorities, according Gartner's 2009 CIO Agenda Survey. The problem is getting there, said Gartner Research Vice President Toby Bell.

"We have guided CIOs to reduce enterprise costs by looking at overlaps in functionality and expenses in contract management. Look at economies of scale and consider an alternative delivery," Bell said.

Utilizing IT to improve businesses processes, not technology processes, helps a business to maintain agility, gain insight and more quickly react to changing conditions in the market, according to Bell.

"IT supporting that [strategy] is a real benefit," Bell said. "If we talk about improving architecture, better provisioning end users, having a higher order of laptop, those are less tangible."

In a down economy, CIOs also should be looking to save money in other ways that shouldn't impact a technology spend, Bell said.

"Enterprises are facing audits and expensive renewals and higher costs in maintenance and higher per-user licensing. I would review with my vendors my contracts that may have room for further negotiation. If I were a CIO, I'd think all contracts were worthy of analysis right now and look to make all my relationships based on flexibility on customer service first and not just making money [for the vendor]."

The second thing CIOs should do is to consolidate their content infrastructure, he said.

"If you have 15 to 20 different applications, is there an avenue toward a cohesive and comprehensive content capability while reducing your number of moving pieces and parts?" he said.

Finally, CIOs should look at a hybrid model that includes applications that are hosted and on-site. "The models for content processes likely will feature new security, user provisioning. There's an undeniable attraction for moving content infrastructure off-premise. That is likely to happen sooner than later. Planning for it is a good idea," he said.

Solutions such as enterprise content management are less about a suite of technology components than a management discipline, Bell said.

"The first thing we tell an enterprise is you need to start thinking about what [discipline] you have in play and how people are using it. Bad habits have yielded big costs," Bell said.

One habit corporations should look to shed is using e-mail as a document-management system or as anything other than a conversion of the paper memo box, Bell said.

"We've tried to make e-mail more than we really should have. There are many other, better technologies that can stimulate collaboration and yield value responding to partner or supplier or customer concerns. It's a far bigger problem than enterprises are able to comprehend," he said.