What LOB leaders really think about IT: IDC study

For IT leaders seeking to move beyond being order takers and instead meet business colleagues eye to eye, the time is now, as IT teams are at risk of being excluded when key business decisions are made, according to a new study by IDC.

Over 20% of North American line-of-business (LOB) leaders said that IT did not have a ‘seat at the table’ in their enterprise when it came to making key business decisions. Globally, 16% said that IT did not have a seat at the table, with only 43% saying it did, and the rest having no opinion.

That the executives surveyed were LOB leaders, not IT leaders, lends insight into how IT departments are viewed by their colleagues, and what is expected of them.

“It’s quite eye opening because they’re saying yes, there is a value in IT, but IT is still seen in that support role versus the business value role,” Jennifer Thomson, an associate vice-president at IDC and one of the report’s authors, told CIO.com. “Maybe that’s why there are so many people that are neutral, because they can’t see beyond the support role, what the value is in IT having a bigger seat at the table.”

As further evidence of the gap between IT and LOBs, only 47% of leaders surveyed said they prefer to use in-house IT resources rather than third parties, and only 42% said they were willing to collaborate with IT.

Leaders in manufacturing and supply chain, R&D, or security and compliance functions were the most likely to see IT as excluded from key decision making, according to the study, which was sponsored by systems integrator Insight. IDC surveyed 1,000 executives from director level up to the C-suite, 30% of them in North America and the rest across Western Europe. They represented manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, retail, hospitality, energy, mining, and public sector organizations, among others.