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Story URL: http://management.silicon.com/itdirector/0,39024673,39167736,00.htm

CEOs and CIOs learning to love each other
Tech-savvy businesses booming, research reveals

By Gemma Simpson

Published: Wednesday 04 July 2007

The UK's business leaders are embracing IT and accepting the important role tech plays in their companies' success.

More than three-quarters (78 per cent) of the UK's business leaders said their IT network is very important or vital to their business, with just one in 10 viewing the IT network as a "static pipe for data", research reveals.

Of the 600 UK business and IT directors surveyed, the high-growth companies - where revenue has increased by more than 15 per cent in the past year - are also more tech-savvy, compared with lower-growth businesses.

High-growth companies are twice as likely to have flexible working capabilities, seven times more likely to offer wi-fi networking across their offices and 50 per cent more likely to view their IT network as a vital, strategic asset than companies with zero growth, according to Cisco's IQ of the British Network study.

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Conversely, business managers' top concern is finding and retaining talented staff but 47 per cent said their company does not allow remote or teleworking and less than two-fifths (38 per cent) allow staff to work remotely or from home under certain circumstances, the research revealed.

Working from home (WFH) is extremely popular with tech professionals, judging by a recent silicon.com poll in which nearly a third (29 per cent) of respondents said they WFH every day.

But the apparent discomfort with remote and homeworking among business managers is reflected in IT investment plans, with homeworking ranking as the lowest influencing factor on IT managers' technology investment priorities over the next 12 to 18 months, according to the Cisco research.

Nick Watson, vice president for enterprise business at Cisco UK and Ireland, said without the support from CEOs, technology investments alone cannot drive positive business outcomes.

The role of the CEO and CIO need to overlap more, with CEOs buffing up on IT and CIOs understanding more about the business, according to the recent Business Leadership of Technological Change report from the Chartered Management Institute.

The report said: "The right relationship and expertise mix between CEO and CIO is crucial. Specifically, the CIO needs business as well as technical skills, to ensure that specialists do not just pursue their own technical agenda alone."