A new technology concern — improving data quality and information integrity— has risen to the top of the list as the most broadly shared critical technology concern for financial executives. For the largest firms, though, aligning business and IT strategy is still the No. 1 concern. That’s one of the findings of the ninth annual Technology Issues for Financial Executives survey, which was conducted by CSC in association with Financial Executives International and the Financial Executives Research Foundation.

While some things change, others remain the same. As it has been for the last three years, most respondents say IT spending will be flat or increase only modestly. Payroll and IT remain the activities that are most often outsourced, as they have been in recent years, and companies continue to be satisfied with the results they are getting from outsourcing. Publicly traded companies still have not been able to substantially reduce the costs of complying with Sarbanes-Oxley, partly because of the fragmentation of financial systems environments.

Data quality/information integrity was a new issue choice added to this year’s survey, and the need to improve integrity shot it to the top, displacing security. A slight majority of all respondents reported that information integrity problems had moderate to significant negative impact on their business. The No. 1 technology concern for the last two years, information security, has now dropped to fourth place. “Prioritizing technology investments” is still in second place, as companies of all sizes continue to have widely varying assessments of the business return they get from technology investments.

. . . but not for the largest firms.

“Aligning business and IT strategy” is still the No. 1 concern for companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue. What’s new is that “improving data quality/information integrity” — the top concern for all firms — is a close second among the largest firms. They were more likely than smaller firms to say that information integrity problems had a negative impact on business performance. Those two concerns and the third-place “prioritizing technology investments” were all named by nearly 60 percent of large respondents as critical concerns.  

Top information needs relate to performance management.

Taken collectively, the top information needs are different dimensions of “performance management,” analytical information to monitor ongoing performance and to support informed decision making.  Also as in previous years, most respondents — just over 60 percent — report making moderate progress in meeting their top information needs. Only about 10 percent reported making substantial progress.

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