Dive Brief:

• More than half of executives now approach technology investments for their strategic value, up from under 40% in the past two years, according to Deloitte's fourth annual survey of mid-market technology trends.
• The survey of 500 mid-market executives at companies with annual revenues ranging from $100 million to more than $1 billion found "productivity and speed-to-value" were the key goals of most mid-market IT investments. IT security was also a priority.
• Mid-sized companies are also spending more on technology overall, with 54% of reporting that their technology budget is higher than last year and 28% indicating their technology spend is over 5% of their total revenue. 

Dive Insight:

Not only have IT investments increased, the reasons behind them have shifted substantially over the last several years. Tech is now viewed as a way to enhance a company's strategic value and mid-market companies have found that early adoption of cloud, social, mobile and data analytics technology can work to their advantage. 

The Deloitte study also found 49% of technology adoption is now led by IT department leaders, compared to only 36% in 2015. Overall, improved productivity was the number one reason cited for new investments in technology. Cloud infrastructure, analytics and Big Data were the technologies mid-market companies said were most likely to generate productivity improvements. 

At this point, cloud, Big Data and analytics capabilities are becoming more than a trend. Instead, companies are pointing toward those technologies as one of the key drivers of their success and their presence is nearly prescriptive in the enterprise. For example, research firm Gartner predicts that cloud technology will continue to grow in importance to the enterprise, with more businesses using cloud than not using cloud technology by 2020.