Democratization

From control to enablement

Democratization

With SaaS, cloud computing and Low-Code / No-Code tooling and AI now prevalent, lines of business can now experiment, execute and scale their own technology initiatives, reducing dependency on the IT function.

Hendrik Deckers

Q: So, is there a risk that the IT function could become obsolete in view of the increasing empowerment and self-sufficiency of the business? What does this mean for the CIO’s role?

A: In the face of increasing democratization, the CIO’s role is to ensure that the business can experiment, to use new technologies to innovate and to create value, by establishing the ‘guardrails’ and the relationships to set them up for success.

Democratization

The focus really is on building what I call the empowering guard rails, and that means setting very clear standards around the security, compliance and the interoperability between systems, but doing it in a way that's really transparent and is also flexible.

Sharon Prior

One of the things you can do is provide your organization with a sandbox - a place where they can go and play.

John Walsh

What we have is a general framework, where we have settled on the baseline infrastructure - security, data management, legal requirements, the kind of things that are not negotiable. And then on top of that we offer some tools that with skills and training, departments can use to develop solutions.

José Antonio López

I do believe that being closer to the business is a change that is needed. But equally, business leaders also need to step a bit closer, improving their overall knowledge of technology and IT in general.

Tom Tanghe

Democratization

The market for Low-Code development will surpass $94.75 billion by 2028 – a CAGR of 31.6% (Gartner). The Impact of Low-Code / No-Code Architectures on Digital Transformation

Source: Forbes, December 2024.

According to Amazon Web Services more than 52% of UK businesses are now actively using AI, and on average, one new business adopts AI approximately every 60 seconds.

Source: AWS

How has the democratization of technology impacted your organization's approach to innovation?

It has significantly accelerated innovation by empowering business units to lead their own tech initiatives.
It has created challenges in maintaining security and compliance across decentralized tech projects.
It has had little impact; innovation is still primarily driven by the central IT function.
It has led to increased collaboration between IT and business units, fostering a more integrated approach to innovation.