Organisations are spending a larger proportion of their revenues on IT than last year, according to Meta Group’s Worldwide IT Benchmark Service. Figures for 2003 show that IT accounted for 3.8% of revenues on average, up from 3.6% in 2002. The sectors spending the highest percentage of revenues are financial services, professional services, banking, telecommunications and information technology. Areas where the lowest percentages of revenues are being spent include construction and engineering, hospitality and retail.

Overall, the organisations surveyed reported a slight increase (1.2%) in the dollar value of IT spending. The sectors that spend the highest percentage of revenues have tended to decrease dollar spending for 2003. The highest growth in dollar spend (more than 5%) was at companies in the pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, hospitality and retail sectors.

On average, organisations spent nearly 6% of operating costs on IT in 2003. Spending on security has increased substantially, but growth in spending on infrastructure development and hardware has increased only slightly. The Meta service says it expects IT buyers to remain cautious in the next year, only forecasting a slight increase in the first half of 2004: “Most CIOs continue to tell us their spending will remain tight due to current financial conditions. A substantial number also indicate that IT spending growth will be limited by their existing IT infrastructure capacity, which for the most part is sufficient and must be leveraged more.”