Increasing operational efficiency, transforming processes and improving customer experience are the main business challenges according to the participants of the IT Snapshot 2018. In order to understand the panorama of technology adoption in the country, the 5th edition of the survey conducted by Logicalis , a global information and communication technology solutions and services company, between February and April of this year, had the participation of 151 IT executives from Brazilian organizations with annual revenues above R$ 300 million.
The result of this edition indicates a clear evolution of the maturity level from one year to the next, and proves that the alignment between the IT and business areas is a reality. However, as a consequence of this transformation, there is a demand for a new profile of professionals in the sector: able to understand business challenges and proactively suggest changes.
Despite 2018 being an election year, 68% of executives are more optimistic about Brazilian economic growth. This positivity was reflected in IT budgets, which are greater than or equal to 84% of companies. Half of respondents have a budget, on average, 14% higher than in 2017. However, the distribution between CAPEX and OPEX remains the same, with 63% of the amount for operating expenses and 37% for investment in assets.
Self-confidence also increased in relation to IT maturity – both in terms of percentage and in the perception of what should be evaluated. In the previous edition, only 2% of the participants believed they had achieved excellence, while today this number reaches 23%.
Current IT landscape in Brazil
Technology is getting closer and closer to business and, although most IT managers are still not part of the boards of directors of companies, in the last two years this synergy has been increasing and is expected to grow even more due to digital transformation, which requires a strong alignment between IT investments and business needs.
This is reflected in the business priorities for 2018: 67% of the projects aims to increase operational efficiency, followed by process optimization and transformation (62%) and customer experience improvement (52%). From a technology perspective, information security soars as the top concern, with 42%, followed by big data/analytics (34%).
disruptive technologies
Among the new technological concepts, big data / analytics appears again in a prominent position. About 15% of the respondents already have projects related to the topic and 49% have pilots or intend to start them in the next 12 months. In second place is the internet of things (IoT), currently in production at 15% of companies and expected to be adopted at 39% of them next year.
In addition, the demand for more agility in meeting business needs has increasingly accelerated the adoption of cloud computing, which is no longer a discourse and becomes a reality in Brazil. The reasons that drive the adoption of the technology are the modernization of the infrastructure (59%) and the search for a better speed to meet business demands (44%). The most adopted model currently is the private one (60%), but there is a strong tendency to expand the use of public and hybrid cloud. The latter currently represents only 31% of the market, but should reach 64% for companies by the end of the year.
With the growth in the adoption of disruptive technologies, data becomes the most important assets of companies and information security is back on the agenda strongly, including in top leadership. However, there is still no consensus among executives on the profile of a competitive company. For 49%, security must prevail, even if it impacts on agility and productivity, while the other half (51%) believes that organizations can give up control to ensure agile and open performance.
Skilled labor
The survey results make it clear that IT professionals need to understand more and more about the business and how technology can benefit them. The main challenge today (42%) is finding professionals with the ability to map business processes and suggest changes. And technical capabilities come second, with security being the most relevant with 29%, followed by big data (24%) and artificial intelligence (21%).
To meet this demand, companies have invested in training, mainly allocating IT employees in the business areas so that they are directly involved in their processes (35%). Training programs and participation in specialized events were other outputs found by managers – 30% and 34%, respectively.
“We live in a very promising scenario for the sector. IT managers have come to play a key role in running the business and there is a proliferation of disruptive technologies to solve the challenges. We have before us a market with many opportunities, but even more challenging, in which it is not enough just to know technological innovations, it is also necessary to have a clear understanding of the business to apply them in order to increase the return.”, says Yassuki Takano, Consulting Director at Logicalis.
Organizations from different sectors of the Brazilian market participated in the research. The study interviewed executives from 145 large companies in the service, manufacturing and trade, agribusiness, public sector, utilities and oil, gas and mining sectors. In addition, six qualitative interviews were carried out to deepen some aspects that drew attention in the quantitative research.
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