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The defining characteristic of the world today seems to be information "as you like it." In entertainment, we see device manufacturers like Apple teaming up with content providers like ABC to offer hot new TV programming like Desperate Housewives, downloadable for only a couple dollars. This by-the-episode format is counterbalanced with cable service and the business of selling a previous season's set of episodes for $30 on DVD. As consumers we have many choices regarding the types, methods and payment mechanisms we select to get the information we want or need.
Midmarket CIOs also have information-related choices to make about how to build, manage and pay for the systems they deploy to support their companies' missions. IDC's market intelligence and advisory service, for example, has more than 500 research services. To navigate through this sea of IT information, you need help from a range of sources: CIO colleagues, vendors, trade publications, consultants and academics, and subscription research firms.
Cost-efficient, appropriately timed knowledge acquisition is clearly a critical success factor for midmarket CIOs. To better understand the workings of IT "smartness" after-market, we queried 250 industry leaders about their experiences with these firms.
On the Verge or in Resurgence?
Our research reveals an industry that is either on the cusp of collapse or the edge of rebirth. CIOs agree that the traditional methods of research based on a tightly managed model ("Here's your information, now send us the check") no longer gets the job done. No one pays sticker price for research services; everyone negotiates (or should).
Further, research firms have two kinds of customers: vendors (who pay them but fear them) and IT practitioners (who listen but don't always trust them). For both groups, trust in the information is critically important. Vendors take the information very seriously, expending extensive resources to ensure that they are represented positively by analysts. Yet of the 40 CIOs in our sample, only three (8%) took analyst reports very seriously. Figures 1 and 2 and the sidebar "Making the Grade" also demonstrate significant dissatisfaction with these firms' results.
This IT smartness after-market is inefficient: One CIO respondent at a Fortune 2000 firm pays $30,000 for a level of service and access for which another CIO respondent at a Fortune 15 company pays $1 million. For midmarket CIOs, the good news is that size matters, so smaller firms pay less for more extensive services.
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