If you examine most research looking at the challenges facing ICT executives one item dominates almost every list. This is the challenge of aligning IT to the business. In essence this task entails ensuring that what the ICT Department is undertaking is what is most relevant to the needs of CEOs and their senior executive team. For too much of its early years ICT executives focused on the technology itself rather than the outputs that the technology generated. The result has been that many CEOs have become critical of the value that ICT provides. This is turn has impacted the ability of ICT executives and suppliers to engage with their business counterparts.
Peter Hind endeavours to address this deficiency. He makes a concerted effort to locate CEO research and to integrate these findings in to his research and presentations. Peter feels that this helps provide a business context against which potential ICT technologies, services and challenges can be assessed. Some of the CEO research that Peter frequently draws upon includes the following:
The Conference Board is a long-established research organisation that addresses the needs of CEOs around the world. It undertakes regular research among CEOs in the commercial sector to examine their priorities and challenges. In particular, one highly relevant research report presents a top ten list of current CEO challenges by industry, geography and size of company.
The McKinsey Quarterly is a print magazine and online service providing access to thought leadership articles and research undertaken by McKinsey consultants. The available archives for members date back to 1992. McKinsey’s objective is to help business people run their organizations more productively, more competitively, and more creatively.
While all the leading accounting organisations undertake and publish thought leadership research and analysis that is well worth reviewing, PWC do an annual global CEO survey on a current ‘hot topic’ in business. The last five themes of the PWC CEO survey have been:
. 2007 - CEO approaches to harnessing the forces of globalisation .2006 - CEO thoughts on globalisation and complexity ·2005 - CEO opinions on governance, risk management and compliance ·2004 - CEO approaches to Managing Risk ·2003 - CEO views on Leadership/Responsibility/Growth in uncertain times ·2002 - CEO attitudes on how to create Opportunities in Uncertainty
The Economist is widely acclaimed for its excellent political analysis, economic performance data and country surveys. However, the Economist Intelligence Unit also undertakes periodic executive and corporate research. A 2007 report titled ‘Corporate Priorities for 2007 and beyond’ is available for free download at http://www.viewswire.com/report_dl.asp?mode=fi&fi=291770414.PDF
These are just a short snapshot of some of the CEO research sources that Peter Hind and Coalface Research utilise in our research and presentations. However, as an independent analyst and research organisation one of the great strengths that Coalface Research and Peter Hind can bring to a client is a much wider perspective to the research and presentations we provide. Most research organisations are handicapped by having to use primarily internal data sources. This can seriously jeopardise their objectivity. On the other hand, Peter Hind and Coalface Research have no issues with harnessing research from a wide variety of sources that is the common domain and freely available, especially on the Internet.
