Business managers spend a significant amount of time on IT support within their firms and believe it is a vital component in their overall success, a new survey has found.

Analyst firm IDC asked managers at 413 firms across Europe with 20 employees or more about what value they placed on IT support and strategies within their business.

The study found that 64 per cent of managers spent a significant amount of their time developing IT strategies, with 70 per cent commenting that IT managers had helped their business with innovation ideas. The role of IT processes was found to be pivotal in many of the firms, with 20 per cent of those surveyed even considering IT managers to be the major initiators of new business strategies.

"While business managers are quite satisfied with their IT managers, they have clear priorities in mind on how IT could better support their business and strategic objectives," said Angela Vacca, IDC consulting manager for European vertical markets.

"Business managers see their internal IT capabilities as needing the highest attention, underlining that IT vendors need to further improve their communication and marketing strategies."

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'