Now Anyone Can Drive Innovation From The Cloud

For the longest time, IT was asked to maintain, not innovate. As a result, responsibility for IT strategy has moved in and out of the IT department in cycles, with other parts of the business bringing the innovation - a development that the adoption of cloud-based services has really fostered. But with integration between cloud services becoming more important, the current trend is seeing the overall strategy move back in to the IT department, even if the budgets aren’t

Enterprise IT strategy 

According to the Vanson Bourne State of Enterprise IT, 2019 report, 28 per cent of survey respondents said that IT strategy decisions were made entirely outside of the IT department in 2017. But in 2018, that number had dropped to 19 per cent.

What’s interesting however is that the control of spend is going the other way. IT departments are completely in charge of spend in only 34 per cent of organisations in 2018, down from 40 per cent in 2017. So, the IT department is drawing a blueprint to build an IT structure fit for the future, taking more control of strategy but not necessarily budget and if you look at where the money is being spent you can see where business is innovating.

From 2017 to 2018, the shift in spend has gone from business strategy and development, to favoring marketing and operations, which is indicative of a wider trend across industries as marketing becomes more tech-driven.

Purchasing decisions are no longer made by IT

Another significant shift is taking place with just who is making the purchasing decisions too. Employees at every level of the organisation are making IT decisions. While the bulk of spend is still made by the most senior decision makers, almost one third of spending decisions are now being made by team supervisors, office workers and manual/technical workers.

This is reflecting the trend that departmental innovations are being made by end users within an organisation. It’s now entirely possible that the amazing cloud-based HR or marketing software your company uses could be discovered and brought in by an administrator or manager rather than a director.

And what’s really interesting is that the IT department appears to trust that the right decisions are being made. The technology, applications and services being used by business are now so mature that 59 per cent of respondents to the Vanson Bourne study agree that people in other departments have the right knowledge to be able to use their access to IT budgets effectively. There isn’t widespread concern. IT really is no longer one siloed department, and it’s not just senior decision makers calling the shots, it’s anyone who can make a compelling argument to buy. But as the decision making regarding applications and services shifts, there are still the connectivity requirements to consider and this is where experience and expertise really comes into play.