Execs Wary of IT for Project Management

SupplyChain Brain reports that "Corporate executives generally lack confidence in the ability of IT to provide the insight and control that is required throughout the lifecycle of a project and would like to see better integration with their business software. These are the findings of a study conducted by the International Project Management Association (IPMA) on behalf of IFS among 273 CEOs or COOs and project managers at project-based businesses across the U.K., U.S., Australia, Scandinavia and the Benelux countries."

Reporting on the study, the IFS site notes that:

• Nearly three quarters (72%) of CEOs/ COOs and Project Managers identify the ability to manage projects as critical or absolutely critical to the future growth of the business
• Despite this, just 11% of CEOs/ COOs and Project Managers are very confident of their ability to manage business critical projects in the most efficient way
• Only one quarter (25%) of businesses surveyed have fully integrated IT systems for project management and just 12% of all businesses are very confident they have full visibility of information to run projects effectively despite identifying IT integration and real time data as priorities for project control

The research also highlights the economic downturn’s effect on business demands placed on project-based industries; 66% of respondents agree or strongly agree that post-recession, enterprise software tools have become even more important to run projects than ever before.

IFS CEO Alastair Sorbie said. “Change is the nature of projects, and we know from many years working with project-oriented companies that flexibility and scalability in project-based solutions is crucial to project success. Together with achieving a holistic view, where businesses have full visibility, control and insight into real-time data tracking, this is vital to manage the new generation of mission-critical projects, and to future organizational growth.”

Both the C-Suite executive leaders and Project Managers questioned agreed that the top three most important factors for consistent and efficient project management were resource planning (55%), integrated Enterprise systems (52%) and real-time data (47%). These results mirrored organizational IT and project-based solution investment priorities with 49% stating integration of IT as a top priority. Real-time data (40%) was the next priority, followed by resource planning (37%).

Despite being stated as an investment priority and being crucial to business success, just one quarter of organizations have fully integrated IT systems in place for project management.