Nearly a quarter of businesses around the world do not determine their IT resource requirements on business priorities, according to new research.

A survey of 749 C-level executives commissioned by the non-profit IT Governance Institute revealed that 60 per cent of organisations are convinced that their business is getting a lot of value out of IT activities.

At the top of the list of benefits are better customer relations, cheaper risk management and higher product leadership.

Innovative companies came out as five times more likely continually to optimise processes as they recognise IT as fundamental to their business and are using it as a competitive weapon.

But almost half of the companies polled have not yet implemented performance measurement for IT, indicating that conservative companies are being held back by their attitude towards IT.

Lynn Lawton, international president of the IT Governance Institute, said: " What stood out for me was the 20 per cent of respondents who do not determine their IT resource requirements based on business priorities. So what do they base them on?

"Also, the fact that only 54 per cent of respondents have implemented, or are implementing, performance measurement for IT.

"Improved IT governance goes hand in hand with getting better value from IT. Companies need to determine if they are getting value from what they have in their portfolio and therefore identify what they can do without."

The IT Governance Institute has developed a governance framework for IT-enabled investments, known as Val IT, to help those with an interest in value delivery from IT.

The primary goal of VAL IT is to enable organisations to secure optimal value at an affordable cost with an acceptable level of risk from investments in business change.

The organisation claimed that this can be achieved through processes and management practices in value governance by defining criteria to obtain optimal value from the portfolio of IT-enabled investments.