Respondents to the survey are in charge of an average annual IT budget of £262 million, 41 percent of which will be earmarked for application projects that are related to business operations and analysis.

However, 76 percent of the IT executives that participated in the research indicated that the difficulty in delivery on and time and on budget is at best staying the same or is actually getting worse. Only 24 percent said that it has become easier.

CIOs and IT managers often find that the difficulty lies in the earlier stages of deployment - approximately half (48 percent) said this was the toughest stage is development. Around 38 percent indicated that testing is their biggest challenge.

Almost half of IT executives believe this is due to a combination of factors, including the length of time it takes to test apps, the resistance they encounter from end users, and the limited skill sets of their IT employees.

It seems, however, that CIOs are going to take a proactive approach to addressing these problems during 2013, where 55 percent indicated that they plan to target new hires with specific skills sets that match their needs and 46 percent intend to hire consultants to improve processes.