Salesforce’s second annual “State of IT” report found that 81 percent of IT tech leaders believe IT is currently entering a new era driven by customer expectations.
The research, which was conducted from a survey of over 2,200 tech leaders across the world, also found that 71 percent of IT organisations are currently in a stage of shifting efforts from being a technology providing cost centre to a value-based service brokerage over the next 12-18 months.
This acts as evidence of the increase in digital transformation projects within the IT sector. This is evident as companies are increasingly adopting customer-centric models, giving IT teams the opportunity to not only improve customer-facing tech, but also transform it.
Adam Spearing, Area VP EMEA, Salesforce said: “With rapidly changing customer expectations IT teams are under pressure to not only improve customer-facing tech but transform it. Delivering this effectively means that IT must be a partner to other departments within their organisations.
“It’s time for IT to finally throw off the shackles of its ‘basement’ image and take on its true role as the business driver and be integrated right across the business.”
Read more: Are businesses really in it to win it in the transformation game?
An example of this transformation is particularly noticeable due to the preparations being made by IT teams to deal with the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), with both customers and employees having high expectations of the impact it will have.
The survey found that among IT teams, 65 percent of employees are in agreement that AI automating and assisting in work-related activities will have either major or moderate impact on the daily work life of organisations by 2020.
Spearing said: “The rise of artificial intelligence will also help IT teams to automate more mundane, time consuming tasks and free up time for team members to focus on innovation.”
However, although being fully aware of the rise, many IT teams remain unprepared for the role as 20 percent of IT leaders said their technology plans in line with AI are comprehensively defined.
