Business process improvements, customer relationship management and business analytics are high on CIOs' to-do lists this year.

If there is any question that technology initiatives must respond to business needs, it is put to rest by what readers of eWeek say they're <A HREF="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2102031,00.asp?kc=EWNAVEMNL030907EOAD">focusing on in 2007.</A>

More than a third of those who took eWeek's top-projects survey say they are looking to do business process improvement. The next hottest areas, customer relationship management and business analytics, also require collaboration between information technologists and business people. Nowadays, businesses aren't funding anything whose return on investment they can't see.