Priorities Shift As Business' Grip On Technology Tightens

In Q4 2008, Forrester surveyed 1,104 IT decision-makers to find out how they set their budgets and allocated funds to different software types and initiatives. As part of this study, Forrester asked where the ultimate software decision control resides — with a business executive, such as a COO or CFO, or with an IT leader such as a CIO. Although most firms fell somewhere in the middle, more than one-third of enterprises (firms of 1,000-plus employees) indicated that either the CIO or a business exec had complete authority. Forrester isolated the respondent data from both of these two extremes to see how priorities and goals differed in a technology universe controlled by the business versus by IT. These differences provide direction on how CIOs can prepare for the inevitable business technology (BT) shift and keep their organizations at the forefront of technology management.