Are Business Leaders Seizing Your IT Budgets?
It's no secret that the ease of procuring various cloud-computing applications and infrastructure services and the BYOD trend have impacted IT organizations' influence. Now a survey released yesterday suggests business leaders are broadly seizing influence over IT decisions from CIOs and enterprise IT decision makers.
More than one-third of IT decisions are made by business leaders who don't report to the CIO, according to the survey released by Avanade, a joint venture of Microsoft and Accenture focused on the deployment and support of Microsoft technologies. The survey of 1,003 business and IT executives shows that 79 percent believe the business leaders feel they are better equipped to make technology decisions.
This shift means IT organizations are becoming "service brokers," according to Avanade. Under this model, IT organizations consult with the business units to determine their needs and goals. Already 35 percent of IT organizations have transitioned to this service-broker model, according to the survey.
Despite the new shift in control, the survey shows that the vast majority of business leaders (83 percent) still have confidence in IT staff interacting with key stakeholders as consultants and 66 percent plan to expand the role of technologists in becoming business advisors in the coming year. To enable this transition, business leaders are turning to IT organizations to partner with them. The survey found that 44 percent of business leaders are looking to enhance their cloud computing skills and 43 percent are looking to work with IT on systems integration.
This shift has not come without pain. "The tilting balance of control over technology decisions and budget has created a real tension between IT and the business and requires IT to rethink its approach, learn new skills and grow its influence," said Mick Slattery, Avanade executive vice president at Global Service Lines, in a statement. "Forward-looking companies are positioning their IT staff as business advisors and see IT contributing more to accomplishing objectives, and driving positive business results than ever before."
Nevertheless IT organizations are for the most part (71 percent) cooperating with this shift, according to the survey.
Are the lines of business seizing your IT budget? If so how much tension has this created in your organization?
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 04/16/2014 at 11:59 AM