CIOs must prepare to share decision-making over IT spends, warns Forrester Research.
While the analyst firm’s latest report found that CIOs are still in control of most IT spending, it also said they will soon be working more closely with the business when it comes to purchasing services.
Principal analyst Andrew Bartels predicted that by 2015, more than a third of tech purchase decisions will be made jointly by the CIO and the business, and called it the best way forward.
He wrote: "The ideal tech-buying process is one in which the business and the CIO’s team work together to identify a need, find and fund a solution, choose the right vendor or vendors, implement it, and manage it."
Just 6.3% of spending on new IT services were done solely by the business in the US last year, Forrester found, but that should rise as the percentage of CIO-only purchases drops from 55% to 47% by 2015.
This comes off the back of a rise in business spend on technology from 2010 to 2012, driven by the consumerisation of IT, said Bartels.
Businesses’ spending on SaaS and IaaS is growing, he added, but claimed CIOs should not fear for the security of their roles.
He said: "The fact that business users are taking the lead in identifying opportunities to apply technology solutions to business problems is a good thing, not something to be deplored."