Companies with revenues less than Rs. 1 billion will spend 32 percent of their budget on business opportunity and 25 percent on innovation, while IT spend for larger companies, with revenues greater than 1 billion have dropped to lesser than 1 percent, understandably so considering maturity of operations and better leveraging of IT investments as per an Ernst and Young and CIO Klub’s 3rd Annual Survey “The Enterprise IT Investment Trends Survey 2011. The Survey report was unveiled in Mumbai at the CIO Klub Anniversary event held in Hyatt Regency in the presence of Nandan Nilekani, chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India. This year’s study is based on a survey of over 170 CIO’s of companies with annual revenue ranging from less than Rs. 1 billion to greater than Rs. 10 billion.

Based on the survey results, Samiron Ghoshal, Partner, Leader – IT Advisory Practice, Ernst & Young said that, many companies are taking steps to further increase spend on IT with a focus on providing business with innovative IT solutions, being more customer centric and investing in technologies that truly aid in giving their business a competitive edge in the market. He believes that, “IT’s focus will be largely to develop positive relationship with the users, support business initiatives with innovative technologies and invest in customer centric and business intelligence applications for better decision making.”

According to the survey, business alignment, business continuity, Information security, CRM/BI/DW and Cost reduction remains top five priorities for CIO for 2011. The report also highlighted that average budget allocation for business opportunity in the retail and consumer products sector is 38 percent, while the banking and financial services and professional services sectors allocation is at 30 percent. The construction and real estate sectors’ spend on maintenance (average budget allocation of 45 percent) is much higher as compared to other sectors. Interestingly, transportation and logistics, another IT dependent sector spends much more on maintenance (average budget allocation of 45 percent) than innovation (average budget allocation of 14 percent).

“We need to act as catalysts to enable business capitalize on the opportunities available and help them grow,” stated Vikas Gadre, VP, CIO Klub.

According to Radhakrishna Pillai, Treasurer, CIO Klub, “We need to partner with the business and help them grow through use of innovative technologies”.

From this year’s survey, it is evident that CIOs are exploring opportunities like Unique Identification project and Social Media to help business. 83 percent of respondents believe that UID can be used for background verifications and further respondents have shown interest in using UID for payroll processing (58 percent) and authentication of user access (61 percent).

A large group of survey respondents have indicated that there are concerns around the use of social media as a corporate communication channel. Nevertheless, a high percentage of respondents perceive that their organisations can use social media as a corporate communication channel and benefit from it if the same is used within the protected and secure environment of the business. 61 percent believes that it can be used for brand promotion/marketing and 47 percent feels that it can be also used as communication channel with customers and stakeholders.

Ashish Chauhan, President CIO Klub, Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India, Pinaki Mishra, Partner in the Advisory Services practice for Ernst & Young in India, Radhakrishna Pillai, Treasurer CIO Klub.