IT departments no longer fund most enterprise technology projects – and to add insult to injury almost one in 10 of the technical staff employed in businesses now works outside IT.

Some 61 percent of company tech initiatives are financed by other businesses functions, with marketing leading the way, according to research firm IDC.

IDC senior vice president Meredith Whalen said business managers have become more skilled with technology and have easier access to it through the cloud.

“[Because they] are under pressure to implement new technology initiatives more quickly, it’s not surprising that line-of-business executives are spearheading more IT projects,” Whalen said in a statement.

Marketing departments
have an annual compound growth rate over a five-year period for technology spending of
more than nine percent.

Cloud changing business processes

Cloud services, big-data analytics, mobile computing, and social networking are fundamentally changing business processes and in some cases business models, Whalen said.

“With such high stakes, the business is increasingly taking a front seat in technology initiatives,” she said.

The IDC research study of 1,200 line-of-business executives found that their departments are looking increasingly like an extension of IT, with on average eight percent of their personnel employed in technical roles.

However, although the sources of technology funding and staffing may be changing, the influence of the IT department is not necessarily in decline.

Some 85 percent of respondents in the IDC study say IT is becoming a more valuable partner to their functional area than it was three years ago.