Like most CIOs, Ian Pitt must ensure the availability and performance of all the systems in the IT stack. But he doesn’t select or even buy all the software that his department supports, instead seeing more of that decision-making falling to his business-line counterparts.
Pitt’s experience isn’t unique.
CIOs and executive consultants say they’ve seen business leaders increasingly taking charge of technology decisions that impact their functional areas.
According to the survey “What Decentralized IT Spending Means for the CIO’s Role,” conducted by IDG and Snow Software, 67 percent of the 450 responding IT leaders said that at least half of their spend is controlled by individual business units.
Pitt, CIO of software company LogMeIn and an active member with the Boston Chapter of the Society for Information Management (SIM), sees benefits in the new budgeting paradigm — if it’s done with the right amount of IT input.