• Target the big spenders on IT products and services
• Understand how big business learn about IT products and services and how they purchase
• Plan advertising schedules to optimize reach amongst the right target for your business
• Take into consideration how the top IT executives read and think about the various IT publications, and what they look for in them.

McNairIT 2006 is a survey of senior and middle IT management in organisations with 50 or more employees throughout Australia. The survey has been conducted by the same management team for a decade, providing a consistent tracking of IT publication audiences. McNairIT measures readership of IT business-to-business media, including magazines and newspaper sections by senior-level IT executives. The results are reported in a ready-to-use fashion for media, advertising agencies and advertisers.

The survey is a strategic marketing tool for advertisers and agencies, providing an in-depth measurement of the commercial power of the IT magazines and newspaper sections.

Data Views and Reporting
McNairIT results can be viewed from two perspectives:

Essentially this means that there are two possible views on the same data – one in terms of numbers of people, and the other in terms of dollars (ie: Senior IT Executives’ expenditure on IT products and services). In 2005 a change was made to refocus the survey on the most senior executive decision makers. The survey estimates of the total national population of Senior IT Executives generally excludes Network Administrators, IT or Network Co-ordinators, or PC Support people, unless they are the most senior IT executive in their organization throughout Australia. Having successfully made this change in 2005, for consistency sake the 2006 questionnaire will remain exactly the same as the 2005 questionnaire.

Study Details
The McNairIT survey is conducted by telephone amongst senior IT professionals, using a combination of electronic business databases provided by reputable sources. The database details the organisation's size and phone number, and often the senior IT manager's name. Should users wish to verify the seniority of respondents, the survey includes the respondent's exact title, a re-coding of these titles, and information such as who the respondent reports to, the respondent's geographic area of responsibility, and even the respondent's income.

The sample is drawn from a de-duplicated blending of two major commercially available databases of Senior IT Executives.

The McNairIT survey is designed to maximise response levels from all the executives on the sample database. To achieve this, the initial contact will be made by telephone, and up to five calls will be placed with each potential respondent to achieve the interview. An additional approach will be made with respondents who initially decline to participate: we will offer to email them a link to an online version of the survey. All interviewing is conducted from McNair Ingenuity's offices by trained executive interviewers under constant supervision. Our quality control procedures are audited and registered to the new Australian Standard for Market Research, AS4752.

The sample is structured to over-represent the larger corporations in order to ensure statistical reliability. The results are weighted back to actual market proportions by size of organisation at the analysis stage.

The Participants

The participants in this study are senior IT Executives including:

• CEOs or CFOs if they are responsible for IT
• CIOs and IT Directors
• IT Managers and Computer Services managers.

Participants in the survey must be personally responsible for one or more of:

• Identifying appropriate products and establishing budgets;
• Evaluaings and recommending products;
• Final approving of an IT product purchase.

These details can be applied to a range of product levels, including:

• Servers
• Desktop & notebook PCs
• Printers and Copiers
• Networking (eg. routers, cabling, hubs)
• Telecommunications
• Security
• Storage (eg. disk drives, tapes, CDs)
• Enterprise software (eg. CRM, ERP, Supply Chain)
• IT services, including consulting, outsourcing etc

In-depth Readership Measurement
The McNairIT survey provides four measurements to delivering far greater depth of understanding about how executives use the repertoire of publications that land on their desk, or that they choose to buy.

The measurements are:

Received
Whether the respondent usually receives a copy of the publication.

Read
Whether the respondent read or looked into that publication within the publication cycle (last week for weeklies, last month for monthlies, etc).

Frequency
How many of the past four issues the respondent has read or looked into.

Quality of reading
The respondent rates which one of the publications they feel is the best for specific needs:

• Up to date with industry trends
• Information about new IT products and services
• IT business management issues
• Finding an IT job
• General interest
• Most useful

Publications that will be included in the readership measurements encompass:

• IT business magazines;
• IT business dedicated sections of newspapers;
• A selection of general consumer computing magazines; and
• A selection of business magazines

McNairIT 2006 also includes questions about:

• Where senior IT executives look for information for making IT procurement decisions
• How IT executives make their purchases (online / through sales rep etc)
• How many screens (working computers) there are at their organisation

McNair Online Media Planner offers the ability to create reach and frequency schedules, filtering on a range of target markets, types of products, and using any combination of 20 publications. McNairIT Online Media Planner even allows you to compare the People View and Expenditure Views simultaneously. Login for McNair Online Media Planner can be obtained by subscribing to the survey.

Key Results from McNairIT 2006

• There are approximately 12,842 organisations in Australia with 50 or more employees, with typically two senior IT executives each, making the total population of senior IT Executives (IT Directors, Managers or their equivalents) 22,846.
• These organisations typically have 313 employees, 11.4 IT staff and 287 screens (computers, servers etc)
• There is almost one screen for every employee in organisations of 50 or more employees throughout Australia.
• This means that each senior IT executive is responsible for 6 IT Staff, 160 computers (screens) and 174 internal customers.

• The typical Senior IT executive in Australia is a man aged about 40, earning just under $100,000 per annum.
• The typical Senior IT executive is responsible for just over $1 million of expenditure every year - enough to replace all their PC hardware (but not software or infrastructure etc) every year.
• Almost seven out of ten Senior IT Executives have responsibility for their staff's learning and development needs, and 62% are responsible for recruiting IT staff.
• When researching product or service purchases, 81% of IT executives go to vendor or manufacturer web sites, 70% consult their colleagues for advice and a further 70% read articles & reviews at IT media web sites.
• While the bulk of IT expenditure (58%) is made by requesting for tenders, 53% of purchases were made by means of a web-site, and almost half of IT expenditure still goes through a provider's sales representative (48%), although 42% of IT expenditure takes place by exchange of emails with the sales rep.
• The most popular monthly IT publications amongst the Senior IT executives who participated in this survey were MIS (Fairfax) and CIO Australia, followed by Technology and Business.
• Amongst the weekly publications, Computerworld was the most commonly read, followed by Next in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on Tuesdays, third came The Australian IT sections on Tuesdays, and fourth was the Australian Financial Review's Information section on Tuesdays.
• Amongst the Government IT Executives the most popular IT magazines is CIO Government followed by IT in Government.
• Respondents were asked to name up to three publication who they consider to be best for a number of purposes, of which some of the winners were: (Amongst Senior IT Executives)
  • CIO and MIS were nominated as best for keeping up to date with Industry trends
  • Computerworld Australia, MIS and Technology and Business were nominated best for information about new IT products and Services
  • CIO - best for IT business management issues
  • Next - SMH's & The Age's Tuesday IT Section - was best for finding an IT Job.
• When asked which one publication was most useful for the job, 16% of Senior IT Executives voted for CIO Australia and 15% voted for Computerworld Australia, this was followed by MIS Australia with 12%.

Note: The summary above is based on the 'People' view of the data in all cases other than when the text refers to the proportion of expenditure, in which case the figures come from the 'Expenditure' view of the data.