According to a study conducted by SAP among almost 500 senior IT staff in eight countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, a key issue was the division of expenditure among three areas – operations, maintenance and innovation.

A third of companies said that their current IT strategy is too focused on “simply keeping the lights on” in the day-to-day running of existing IT systems.

Overall, 60 percent of companies said that this IT strategy has “held them back” from investing in innovation. Respondents indicated that they face a wide range of issues that currently prevent them from investing in technology.

The most commonly cited reason was uncertainty about the economy, with 48 percent of respondents believing this was a barrier. In addition, 39 percent stated that too much money is spent on operations at the moment, therefore leaving a deficit in the budget that could otherwise be directed towards innovation.

The detrimental effect was also viewed as impacting competitiveness, with 38 percent of respondents stating the current spend priorities harmed their competitive position.

A lack of spend on IT innovation is having a negative business impact, with 44 percent of respondents saying it has directly resulted in a lack of productivity.

In addition, 43 percent also claimed to have lost potential cost savings because of the spend deficit. Also, over half of the companies surveyed believed they would get greater business value if more was spent on IT innovation.

Our point is this, why compromise when you don’t have to? When your business is powered by OSMO®  you are making an investment in both innovation AND operational performance effectiveness! In fact, OSMO® gives you the perfect balance to your decision making with effortless transparency, saving you time, money and exposure to error risk.