Top 10 Trends for CIOs in Australia

Each year, we reach out to C-level executives from Evanta communities around the world to participate in our annual Leadership Perspective Survey. Their feedback indicates their top priorities for the business, for their function, and for their investments in 2022.

This information helps us to create relevant and timely topics and sessions customised for each community’s needs. In addition, we often discover subtle differences in our Evanta regions when it comes to executives’ goals and challenges.

Our initial survey results of more than 700 CIOs show some clear trends across our communities globally. Here, we will take a closer look at the priorities and goals that our Australia CIO community members have shared with us, including in Melbourne and Sydney. 

These are the top five trends for CIOs’ Enterprise Priorities:

1. Improving Customer Experience and Increasing Operational Efficiencies and Productivity have remained the top two enterprise priorities for two years running in Australia’s communities.

2. Enterprise Agility and Resilience has dropped four places, ranking #7 for CIOs in Australia in 2022.

3. Digital Business Acceleration is a new priority added this year and comes in at #5.

4. Driving Growth has jumped from 8th to 4th in the rankings for 2022.

5. Reducing Risk has moved out of the top 5 enterprise priorities, dropping to #12..

Here’s a chart identifying the top three enterprise priorities for CIOs in Melbourne and Sydney communities for 2022.

And, these are the top five trends for CIOs’ investments in 2022:

1. 64% of CIOs have identified an increase in their operating budget for the coming year, up from 55% in 2021.

2. 69% of CIOs have identified an increase in their planned tech spend for 2022, which is 5 points higher than in 2021.

3. CIOs are continuing to make heavy investments in Cybersecurity and Business Applications this year. In fact, Cybersecurity has remained in the #1 spot, and 87% of CIOs with planned spend in Cybersecurity will make their investments within the next 12 months.

4. Investments in both Cloud Applications and Cloud Infrastructure remain a priority this year and are ranked as the fourth and fifth-highest investment areas, respectively.

5. Data & Analytics investments remain in the top five planned spending opportunities for 2022 and have been noted as the #2 investment technology in the Sydney region.

Here’s a chart identifying the top three investment areas for CIOs in our regions in Australia for 2022.

In addition, our conversations with CIOs this year are backing up the trends taken from our Leadership Perspective Survey. Many CIOs have stated that, “We are no longer an (insert industry) company, we are also a technology company.” CIOs are increasingly driving value and better business outcomes for the next generation of digital enterprises. 

What we do best here at Evanta, a Gartner Company, is bringing timely, regionally focused content to our executive communities. What may be important to CIOs in North America or Europe may not be as big a priority for those in Australia. The data above helps us tell this story. 

All in all, digital success in Australia will happen when CIOs continue to improve operational efficiencies, improve customer experience, and drive growth while continuing to invest in technologies that support the advancement of their business.