Top 10 Projects in 2006 by IT spend

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A friend sent me a link to an article that highlighted the Top 10 Projects ranked by expected spending for the year.  It sparked a good conversation between us and as a result, we both reached out to our colleagues to try and do an ad hoc validation of the list.  The feedback seemed pretty common and while no one was surprised at the list, they generally felt that it was somewhat out of alignment with the Canadian industry.   Here’s what the article captured from their 1440 respondants:

Project Average spending* Median spending* % of respondents
1. Voice-over-IP $11,112,000 $100,000 16.30%
2. Outsourcing $8,216,000 $750,000 6.00%
3. Data networking $5,569,000 $150,000 14.70%
4. Customer relationship management $5,177,000 $135,000 17.30%
5. Collaboration $4,255,000 $75,000 9.50%
6. Supply chain management $3,310,000 $500,000 7.10%
7. Desktop upgrades $3,212,000 $50,000 27.50%
8. Application performance management $2,975,000 $200,000 9.00%
9. Business analytics $2,629,000 $250,000 11.90%
10. Compliance tracking $2,479,000 $160,000 6.70%

* Planned spending of respondents indicating the technology is critical to their organizations.

Source: Baseline Top 10 Projects in 2006 survey (https://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,1933598,00.asp)

Does this list make sense to you and if not what stands out?  For me it was hard to beleive that outsourcing is really number 2.  Some of the other people we talked to commented that "data networking really happened in the Canadian large enterpries last year.  VOIP did seem to be everyones number 1 or 2 and compliance ranked in the middle.  As well, everyone seemed to agree that 2006 IT spend was more about supporting business growth and most importantly controlling costs.

What are your top projects?  As we all prefer to learn from our peers, it would be great if you could comment or even guest blog to share your learning’s with others on your top projects.

Regards, John