Dive Brief:
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Just four in 10 IT decision-makers trust their business counterparts to make informed technology buying decisions, according to a survey from Spiceworks Ziff Davis (SWZD) released June 15. The firm surveyed 300 IT and 200 business decision makers.
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But 58% of business decision makers perceive themselves as sufficiently informed to purchase technology, SWZD found.
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IT decision-makers are part of 88% of cloud purchases, according to the report. On average, six to eight key stakeholders are involved in making cloud purchasing decisions.
Dive Insight:
Though organizations look to the CIO for guidance in technology outfitting, purchasing decisions aren't made in a silo.
The number of stakeholders within a company shopping for tech solutions has expanded, said Toby Harris, CEO of Quartz Network. Executives across the organization have evolved to being "much more in the driving seat of determining the technologies that they are onboarding," Harris said.
The trend is partly driven by the ease of adoption of cloud-based technologies. The lower barrier of entry for adoption means more parts of the business can experiment by trialing tech solutions — a strategy that stirs concern over shadow IT.
Operating remotely last year led to a greater emphasis on tech tools. Interest remains, with 80% of decision-makers saying cloud technologies are useful for supporting remote workers, according to the report.
The ecosystem of technologies available to business and IT leaders is also getting more complex. "There has been an explosion of the volume of technologies and solution providers that are servicing the business user space," said Harris. Over two-thirds of IT leaders say close to half of their IT spend is controlled by individual business units, according to data from Snow Software and IDC Connect.
To address the challenges of tech tool sourcing, it's up to the CIO to present a strategy that allows technologies to come together.
"The role of the CIO is very much one of helping facilitate how these various platforms ... string together," said Harris.