Answering the Five W’s of the 2019 West Michigan IT Forecast
This year, we once again set out to understand how IT leaders use technology to shape their business growth. In our 2019 IT Forecast, we tackle topics of security, investment trends and IT hiring, but before we get into those details, we ought to understand first what defines an IT leader in West Michigan.
To ensure we received the most accurate results, we issued the survey anonymously, looking at a diverse cross-section of IT leaders and business decision-makers in industries like manufacturing, healthcare, technology, education and more. Of the companies represented, the manufacturing industry made up 30 percent of our participants.
Similar to last year, the majority of respondents were IT Department, C-Suite or Director Level employees with nearly three quarters from Ottawa and Kent County.
As we continued to establish a basic business profile of our respondents, we were excited to see the diversity in size of the businesses represented. Whether it was a business with 0-4 active users or companies with 2,500+ users, our results ran the gamut in regards to business size. However, most were in the 250 or less camp, so we would qualify our data reflects small business opinions strongly.
Top IT challenges
On top of looking at who we surveyed, we’d be remiss to go into this adventure without understanding what top IT challenges companies are facing. The results really didn’t come as a great surprise… budget, aging infrastructure, and security. As we all know, money talks and with limited funding comes an aging infrastructure. Security has been a topic of concern for years since we live in a world of phishing emails, viruses, ransomware and a number of other hacking methods.
Looking ahead
So now, with the table set, if you’re ready to dive into the full data, check out the link below. Going forward, we will post a new blog every Wednesday with analysis into the different sections of this year’s report.
To view the complete IT Forecast report, visit here.
Worksighted Team
We are a team of over-enthusiastic people, ready to help our clients utilize technology to spur growth! We love technology and come to work every day eager to solve problems and find ways to impact our clients.
