BACK TO SECTION 5
Section 6: Information Technology
The final topical section of the survey focuses on technology. Questions focus broadly on management of information technology functions and likelihood of outsourcing those functions in the future. Question #22 asks about company policy regarding the Internet (Figure 20).22. Does your company have any of the following in place regarding use of the Internet?
While over 60% have a policy that guides use of the Internet at work, less than three in ten have a way to monitor the amount of time employees spend on the Internet. It is unclear whether respondents do not feel the need to actually monitor employee use of the Internet or whether they would like to be able to monitor Internet use but just do not know how. A small minority of respondents (14.3%) report having a policy relating to blogs authored by employees.
All three of these statements are affected by organization size (as measured by either revenue or number of employees), with larger organizations being significantly more likely to answer “yes” to each question.
The next question asks about information system security, productivity, and evaluation (Figure 21).
23. How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements about information technology at your company?
In general, it appears executives trust the security protocols for data and information systems at their organizations. Interestingly, only about a third feel confident in their ability to monitor the productivity of their IT staffs, and only about half feel they are competent to monitor their key IT personnel.
Interestingly, these responses do not vary based on organization size. Thus, executives in general do not feel confident in managing IT functions within their organizations.
The final question in this section asks about the likelihood of outsourcing various specific information technology functions within the next year and a half (Figure 22).
24. Over the next 18 months, how likely is your company to outsource the following information technology functions?
According to our respondents, based on mean responses, few of the functions contained in this question are likely to be outsourced during the next year and a half. In fact, only server maintenance has a mean which is statistically significantly above the scale midpoint, indicating a very weak likelihood of outsourcing for the sample as a whole.
However, the distribution of responses for most of these functions is bi-modal which suggests that, while average responses are relatively low, there are significant numbers of executives interested in outsourcing specific functions. In fact, large minorities rate six of the ten functions as either a “6” or a “7,” indicating a high likelihood of outsourcing those functions (Figure 23).
25. Over the next 18 months, how likely is your company to outsource the following information technology functions? (Shown are the percentages who responded with a “6” or a “7.”)
According to Figure 23, over 40% of executives in this survey are very likely to outsource their server maintenance and/or production/maintenance of their company Web site. About one third are very likely to outsource computer programming, security systems, workstation installations, and/or HR/payroll systems.
There seems to be very little interest in outsourcing customer service call centers, perhaps because those who were interested have already done so, perhaps because of the negative press coverage often given to such outsourcing, or perhaps because this issue is irrelevant to some organizations.
