IT SPEND ON ENABLING WFH INFRA TO TOUCH 19% IN 2021, MARKS 27% INCREASE: CMR

Birender Singh

Birender Singh

  • Collaboration Infrastructure gets a boost, Enterprise spend to touch 19% in CY21
  • Enterprise challenges in WFH include security concerns (75%), productivity losses (67%), team management (34%), and, the need for a greater number of devices (45%).

New Delhi/Gurugram, 1 Oct 2020. In the wake of the pandemic, Indian enterprises have channelled their current IT spend towards enabling work from home (WFH), with indications that this spend will increase further in the next year. As per new CIO survey insights from CyberMedia Research, India’s pioneering technology market research and advisory firm, this marks a 27% increase in proportion of IT Spend channeled towards collaboration infrastructure, mainly focused on enabling a remote workforce in the neo normal. Education and Healthcare verticals are going to see maximum increase in spend on collaboration.

The study The New Work Dynamic: Collaboration in the Neo Normal” was conducted in July-August 2020, with CIOs across large and medium enterprises.

According to Anil Chopra, VP-Research and Consulting, CyberMedia Research (CMR), “The current pandemic has brought a lot of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity to the world. Work from Home (WFH) has become a reality and traditional places of work are losing relevance. Every organization must learn to adapt to the new normal and explore the right collaboration tools that drive efficiency, enable seamless communication, and are secure and reliable at the same time.”

At the initial throes of the pandemic, there were teething enterprise challenges with ensuring business continuity. These included challenges, such as, lack of knowledge about co-workers’ availability and location (55%); disconnect between business process and communication applications (52%); and, loss of business because of inability to reach decision makers on the first try (43%).

In the new WFH environment, marked by sudden spike in collaboration needs, enterprises seek to build agility to resolve them. Enterprise challenges include security concerns (75%), productivity losses (67%), team management (34%), and, the need for a greater number of devices (45%). They responded to the pandemic by building stop-gap infrastructure to meet the needs (93%), and provisions for increased bandwidth (36%).

According to Thomas George, President, CyberMedia Research (CMR), “Most of the organisations are looking for accelerated adoption of digital solutions during their process of recovering and reimagining the business and its operations. However, this may vary, depending on the sector, but the reality is that there will adoption of digital solutions that can reduce operational costs during the next normal. The sectors for critical products, such as pharmaceuticals are localizing their supply chains and creating more stronger collaborative relationships with critical suppliers by building their digital capabilities.”

Given that the neo normal is here to stay, enterprises will focus more spend on enabling project task management and coordination – including employee time trackers (26%), project management systems (23%), and file sharing and management technologies – including version control (19%) and document collaboration (9%), among others.

The study “The New Work Dynamic: Collaboration in the Neo Normal” is available online at https://cmrindia.com/shelf/

About CMR

CMR offers industry intelligence, consulting and marketing services, including but not limited to market tracking, market sizing, stakeholder satisfaction, analytics and opportunity assessment studies.

Its bouquet of consulting services includes incubation advisory, go-to-market services, market mapping and scenario assessment services. CMR is servicing domestic as well as international clientele in India and few global destinations. The clientele serviced represents SMBs, Large Enterprises, Associations and Government. CMR’s core value proposition encompasses a rich portfolio of syndicated reports and custom research capabilities across multiple industries, markets and geographies.

A part of CyberMedia, South Asia’s largest specialty media and media services group, CyberMedia Research (CMR) has been a front-runner in market research, consulting and advisory services since 1986. CMR is an institutional member of Market Research Society of India (MRSI). For more information, please visit CMR’s website, Twitter and LinkedIn pages. For queries, please contact: releases@cmrindia.com