For the second consecutive year, Deloitte has conducted a major CIO survey to analyse the developments of the CIO role. 900 CIOs across 49 countries participated in the survey this year, out of which 40 CIOs are based in Luxembourg.  

“The traditional responsibilities of CIOs have been to focus on meeting business demands for reliable, cost-efficient technologies. Earning the credibility required to become active participants in strategic leadership conversations will likely be a gradual process for many CIOs,” explains Patrick Laurent, consulting partner at Deloitte Luxembourg and in charge of CIO advisory services.

CIOs to grow as business leaders of the digital era
A comparison of global and local findings reveals that driving digital strategy has a much lower priority in Luxembourg than what is observed globally. While CIOs globally include digital strategy in their top-3 priorities, CIOs in Luxembourg listed digital strategy only seventh on their agendas.

Luxembourg CIOs differ from global findings with their strong focus on service delivery and customer experience through technology. In line with global findings, CIOs prioritise delivery of IT services over growth. This mindset may make it difficult for CIOs to transform their organisations from cost centers to profit centers in the future, the survey suggests.

Innovation as opposed to business as usual
The survey shows that the IT budget evolution trend in Luxembourg is in line with the global trend. This year, 79% of Luxembourg CIOs saw their budgets increase or stay the same compared to 71% last year. However, contrary to global findings, an increase is observed in the share of Luxembourg IT budgets spent on routine IT activities, which is at 56% and up from 53% the year before, thereby reducing the proportion of investments made for growth and innovation.

Almost half of Luxembourg CIOs (47%) consider innovation to be important for their organisation, but receive little funding to effectively deliver it. This is illustrated by the fact that almost 40% of Luxembourg CIOs spend less than 10% of their budget on innovation.

“The survey confirms that CIOs are quite challenged in their role. They are struggling to become true business partners and defend their own projects when facing business needs. This could explain why Luxembourg CIOs are not focusing on innovation and on driving digital strategy,” concludes Patrick Laurent.

In terms of behaviour, Luxembourg CIOs are generally aware of the importance of engaging as business leaders and strategic partners, and a fourth of them describe themselves as taking charge of situations. The fact that two-thirds tend to be more rational than intuitive probably emphasises the lesser degree of innovation in Luxembourg compared to the overall study results.

The biggest constraint in starting risky IT investments for innovation and growth in Luxembourg seems to be the limited IT budget specific to those areas, and not so much the business leadership’s averse risk attitude as the global survey reveals.

Technology trends
Private cloud continues to be the most widely adopted new technology, globally and in Luxembourg, where the level of adoption now reaches 40%, compared to 32% last year.

Confirming last year’s CIO survey results, developing IT sourcing strategies and increasing offshoring of the IT function are seen as very low priorities.

Compared to their peers, Luxembourg CIOs are more consistent in the application of technology trends, though appearing to be more followers than early adopters. While private cloud is the most widely adapted tech trend and continues to increase, all indicators show that Luxembourg lags behind globally when it comes to analytics and big data.

The full version of the Luxembourg CIO survey is available on Deloitte Luxembourg's website at the following address: http://www.deloitte.com/lu/ciosurvey2014