Mobility Top Priority For 35% Of Global CIOs

One-third of chief information officers (CIOs) across the globe have made incorporating mobility within their companies their top priority this year in the hope that it is the right path to follow in order to expand their revenue stream, according to Accenture’s latest report.

The research, titled The Accenture 2013 CIO Mobility Survey, also showed that mobility will be one of the top five priorities for 42% of industry professionals.

The results are based on responses from 413 IT experts across 14 industries in 14 countries, including the UK. For 79% of those interviewed, mobility is one of the components that drives their revenues, while 84% believe that it will contribute substantially to their relationships with customers. Another 83% consider that mobility will have a great impact on their operations as a whole.

Enhancing interactions with consumers via mobile devices is the second most important priority for CIOs, cited by 36% of them, particularly when it comes to mobile transactions. Customer service was the channel IT professionals seek to improve most through mobility (43%) and 29% said that they plan to develop and deploy connected devices to support B2B applications.

Over half of CIOs admitted that they had a “moderately developed formal mobile strategy” in place and 23% stated that their mobile strategy was extensively developed, which is below the 31% recorded last year. According to Accenture, this could be a sign that the speed at which organisations are adopting mobile technology is on the rise to the extent at which they are being urged to deploy a loose mobile strategy rather than taking time to devise a more detailed one.