MUMBAI, INDIA: Companies with revenues less than Rs.. 1 billion will spend 32 per cent of their budget on business opportunity and 25 per cent on innovation, according to a combined survey by Ernst and Young and CIO KLUB.

The annual survey - The Enterprise IT Investment Trends Survey 2011 - also finds that IT spend for larger companies with revenues greater than Rs.. 1 billion have dropped to less than 1 per cent, considering maturity of operations and better leveraging of IT investments, said a press release.

“The survey results reflect confidence in the India growth story and many companies are taking steps to further increase spend on IT with a focus on providing business with innovative IT solutions, being more customer centric and investing in technologies that truly aid in giving their business a competitive edge in the market,” said Samiron Ghoshal, partner, leader - IT Advisory Practice, Ernst & Young.

According to him, IT’s focus will be largely to develop positive relationship with the users, support business initiatives with innovative technologies and invest in customer centric and business intelligence applications for better decision making.

The survey also says that 23 per cent of the IT budget will be invested in deploying innovative technologies for business to compete in the market, while 28 per cent in IT-enabled business operations to capitalize on business opportunities. As much as 35 per cent of IT budget will be invested in maintenance of current IT services and 14 per cent will be directed towards compliance with various legal, corporate and regulatory requirements, it says.

The survey also says business alignment, business continuity, information security, CRM/BI/DW and cost reduction will be the top 5 priorities for CIO in 2011.

The study was conducted based on a survey of over 170 CIOs of companies with annual revenue ranging from less than INR 1 billion to greater than INR 10 billion. The objective of the survey was to capture key IT trends and investment patterns across various sectors and strategy adopted by various CIOs to aid business growth.