Do all IT professionals share the same perceived challenges, or do they differ according to roles and responsibilities?
Our first party research conducted among IT professionals in the Insights for Professionals (IFP) Community reveals the most significant challenges faced by today’s tech buyers.
See how these challenges differ between job seniority and specialisms in our cross-examination of the following fields of expertise:
Audience overview
What are the most pressing challenges in Cybersecurity?
The greatest challenge across the vast majority of seniority levels within Cybersecurity is Data Protection. 43% of both Senior Managers and C-Suite and 42% of both Director and VP levels consider this a pressure point, highlighting that it’s a tricky area to overcome regardless of authority level. Heads of, however, see Malware as a slightly more pressing issue (37%) with Data Protection still coming in a very close second (36%). On the other hand, only 12% of Directors consider Malware a real concern.
For Senior Managers, Malware and Ransomware were both identified as the next biggest obstacles with 22% of the vote each. A similar pattern was seen with VP level, with 17% citing both Malware and Ransomware after Data Protection. Interestingly, C-Suite cited the second biggest cybersecurity challenge as Phishing (24%). Yet, across all other levels, Phishing was considered the lowest threat with just 3% of Senior Managers considering it an issue.
What do Cloud Management employees consider the biggest obstacles?
Just a quick glance of the pie charts shows a clear and overwhelming indication that Cloud Security is the main challenge across every level of seniority in the field of Cloud Management. No less than 50% of the vote has gone to Cloud Security across the board, with almost two-thirds of Senior Managers identifying it as their greatest threat (61%).
Heads of (33%) and Directors (20%) cite Cloud Computing as their next biggest pain point, yet just 5% of VPs agree that it poses an issue. The clear disparity here highlights the fact that each seniority level plays a different role in the management, implementation and monitoring of specific tools and systems. Therefore, what one might identify as a real problem will not necessarily resonate with others across the business – often causing conflict when it comes to budget allocation.
Notably, Cloud Migration and Managed Hosting and Services have not been selected by any Heads of, suggesting they do not necessarily delve into these areas too heavily to feel the challenges they have posed to others. Likewise, Hybrid Cloud hasn’t been selected by a single Senior Manager, yet 11% of both Heads of and C-Suite consider it a concern.
What are the greatest concerns in the world of DevOps?
Similar to Cloud Management, there is one obvious pain point which stands out when looking at the problem areas for those specializing in DevOps. All levels of employee with the exception of VPs, consider CI/CD Tools to be their greatest challenge, ranging from 36% of Directors to over half (54%) of C-Suite. The biggest obstacle for VPs is Application Release Orchestration (34%), yet CI/CD Tools come in a very close second, at 33%.
On the other hand, those in the C-Suite specializing in DevOps consider Application Release Orchestration to be the least of their worries, with just 9% of the vote. It’s also interesting to note that Heads of have selected just 2 of the 4 options, with a clear 50/50 split between both Bug Tracking and CI/CD Tools. This infers that Application Release Orchestration and Batch Management are not even close on their threat radar, while they appear on every other level’s hit list even if it is at the bottom.
Digital Transformation professionals: What are their main concerns?
A staggering 62% of VPs and 60% of C-Suite specialists in Digital Transformation consider Digital Technology Integration to be the largest area of concern. It is the top, or for Heads of joint top (30%), challenge for all five seniority levels – often by a considerable way. This is expected in the world of Digital Transformation where any form of transformational tech will inevitably require the skilful integration of digital technology which, without the right knowledge and existing infrastructure capabilities, isn’t always easy to master.
Not a single VP considers Culture and Leadership to be a concern, yet 13% of Senior Managers would disagree. On the other hand, 5% of Senior Managers and just 4% of C-Suite cite Workforce Enablement as a challenge while almost a third (30%) of Heads of consider it a threat. After Digital Transformation, it is clear that the subsequent pressure points vary across the levels of seniority.
What do Data Management specialists believe are their biggest barriers?
Almost half (45%) of Senior Managers specializing in Data Management consider Data Center Management their biggest threat. Less than a quarter of Heads of and C-Suite agree, both coming in at 22% of the vote. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) was identified as the top pain point for VPs (43%), Heads of (34%) and C-Suite professionals (30%).
Not a single VP identified Visualization as an obstacle, while almost a quarter (22%) of Heads of felt it should be. Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Servers both consistently saw between 10 and 24% of the vote across all 5 levels of seniority, suggesting that while they aren’t the top challenges, they are still very much present across the hierarchy and require involvement from everyone.
What can you learn from these key challenges?
We’ve taken you on a whistle-stop tour of the most significant challenges faced by today’s tech buyers across the fields of:
- Cybersecurity
- Cloud Management
- DevOps
- Digital Transformation
- Data Management
These insights should help set you up with the knowledge needed for your next steps. Put forward your offerings in ways which alleviate the obstacles identified by tech buyers and use this know-how to target your audience with tailored content and timely, relevant campaigns which add value where they need it the most.
It is only too apparent many challenges differ between job seniority and specialism. This flags the importance of using credible research to fully understand your market and the key audiences within your target decision making unit (DMU)
For further B2B Buyer insights, download our full research report: B2B Tech Buyer Behavior: Unique Insights for 2021/22
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