The 2023 SIM IT Issues and Trends Study

The Society for Information Management's 43rd Annual IT Issues and Trends Study received responses from 671 IT executives, including 251 CIOs and 436 unique organizations. The average revenue of participating organizations was $5.3 billion (median $500 million). IT spending as a percentage of revenue was 6.8%, up significantly from 2022. However, though 64.2% of organizations reported increasing IT headcount, this is significantly lower than the 74.6% high in 2022 but more consistent with that reported in 2021. Continuing a five-year upward trend, 95.9% of organizations reported increases in average IT salaries. The top five IT management issues for organizations in 2022 were Alignment, Cybersecurity, Daya Analytics, Digital Transformation and Compliance; the top five largest IT investments were Analytics, Cybersecurity, Application Development, Cloud and ERP; while the five most-difficult-to-find technical s were Cybersecurity, Analytics, Business Analyst, Cloud and Functional Area Knowledge. The most common criteria for assessing CIO performance were Internal Customer Satisfaction, Value of IT to the Business, Cost Control/Reduction - IT, Availability/Up-Time and Cybersecurity. The average tenure of CIOs was 6.3 years (median 4.2 years), with 46.9% reporting to the CEO. CIOs continue to come from outside organizations at record levels (81.3%) and 22.4% came from prior non-IT positions.(1)