Annually, CGI leaders around the world meet face-to-face with business and IT executives to gather their perspectives on the trends affecting their enterprises, including business and IT priorities, IT spending, budgets and investment plans. In 2020, we conducted in-person interviews with 58 client executives across 6 countries, who indicate a continued focus on protecting through cybersecurity. Interviews were conducted before and after the pandemic declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, providing unique insights into evolving priorities. We provide a short summary of some of these insights below and in the PDF available for download on this page.

Protection through cybersecurity still dominates trends

The trend with the highest impact for defense and intelligence executives continues to be protecting through cybersecurity, followed by IT modernization and becoming a digital organization.
 
Changes in procurement models and decreasing or flat budgets rise in impact, while assuring regulatory compliance lessens.

2020 top trends by impact

  1. Protecting through cybersecurity
  2. IT modernization
  3. Becoming digital organizations
  4. Changes in procurement models
  5. Decreasing or flat budgets and spend

 

Post-pandemic declaration trends show rise in becoming digital

When comparing interviews before and after the pandemic declaration by the WHO, becoming a digital organization rises in impact as a trend (+16%), while changes in procurement models lessens significantly (-27%).

Results from digital strategies rise, but are still low

This year, 76% of defense and intelligence executives report they have some form of a digital strategy in place, down from 86% last year. Of those, 32% indicate they have an enterprise-wide strategy, but just 14% report their enterprise strategy extends to their external ecosystem. Rising 5 points from 2019, 14% of executives now say their organization is producing results from digital strategies.

IT modernization and cybersecurity are top investment priorities within 3 years

Looking out over the three-year horizon, 86% of executives indicate that IT modernization is their top area of planned innovation investment within the next 3 years, followed by cybersecurity (82%).

Interest in substantial managed services rises post-pandemic declaration 

This year we asked defense and intelligence executives to share why they use managed services and how they plan to leverage them. The top reasons are to save costs and maintain control.  

% planning to leverage substantial managed applications in 3 years
31% 2020 (post pandemic declaration)
26% 2020 (pre-pandemic declaration)
28% 2019

Benchmarking clients’ satisfaction with their own IT organization

Defense and Intelligence - IT satisfaction chart

(Scores from 1 to 10, with 10 most satisfied, showing 3 out of 10 available attributes) 

For the third year, business and IT executives interviewed ranked their satisfaction with their own IT organizations based on the 10 key attributes of a world-class IT organization. For most attributes, business leaders report lower satisfaction levels with internal IT compared to IT leaders, and introducing innovation consistently earns the lowest average score. 

Learn more about the CGI Client Global Insights.

Learn more about the CGI in Defense and Intelligence.

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