Top 10 Trends for CIOs in Europe

At Evanta, a Gartner Company, we survey our C-level executive communities each year to discover their priorities, challenges and goals for the coming year. With this critical input, we build world-class agendas focused specifically on each community’s needs and objectives. 

It’s so interesting to observe the subtle differences in each region for the executives’ enterprise goals and the planned investment areas, which, of course, will help them achieve their objectives.

In our initial survey results (of 700+ CIOs), there are some clear trends happening across our communities globally. In this blog, we’ll take a deep dive into the top priorities for our CIO communities in Europe.

The top five trends we observed for CIOs’ enterprise priorities:

1. Increasing Operational Efficiencies and Productivity and Driving Growth have remained the #1 and #3 rated enterprise priorities for two years running, respectively.

2. Improving Customer Experience has dropped two places, ranking #4 for EMEA CIOs in 2022.

3. Digital Business Acceleration is a new priority added this year and comes in at #2.

4. Reducing Risk has jumped from 9th to 6th in the rankings for 2022.

5. Increasing Enterprise Agility and Resilience has moved out of the top 5 enterprise priorities, dropping to #8.

Here’s a chart identifying the top three enterprise priorities for CIOs in our regions across Europe for 2022.

The top five trends we are seeing for CIOs’ investments in 2022:

1. 60% of CIOs have identified an increase in their operating budget for the coming year, up from 49% in 2021.

2. 63% of CIOs have identified an increase in their planned tech spend for 2022, which is 8 points higher than in 2021.

3. CIOs are continuing to make heavy investments in Cybersecurity and Data and Analytics in 2022. In fact, Cybersecurity has moved into the #1 spot and 84% 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 second and fourth highest investment areas, respectively.

5. Business Application investments remain in the top five planned spending opportunities for 2022 and has been noted as the #1 investment technology in the DACH region.

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

These top trends may help CIOs adjust their strategies or simply feel more confident in the direction they’re headed based on the input of other C-level peers. The trends are also helpful for our strategic partners as they provide further understanding of their potential customers.

CIOs increasingly impact the overall business, creating value and better business outcomes with the support of technology. Digital success will happen when CIOs continue to improve operational efficiencies, accelerate digital business, and drive growth while continuing to invest in technologies that support the advancement of their business.