Half of commercial technologists produce technology for users outside their department: Gartner

Gartner defines business technologists as employees who report outside of IT departments and build technology or analytics capabilities for internal or external business use.

“Technology work, once the purview of dedicated IT outlets, is being democratized,” said Raf Gelders, Gartner’s vice president of research. “The best enterprises harness the expertise and ingenuity of all their employees and compete in a progressive and progressive digital economy. CIOs are working with other C-Suite leaders to do the same.”

A dramatic increase in digitization opportunities with lower barriers to entry (eg, low-code development tools and AI-assisted development) are among the key factors that enable the democratization of technology development beyond IT professionals. 77% of business technologists regularly use automation, integration, application development or a combination of data science and AI tools in their daily work.

Compared to creating technology or analytics capabilities independently, four out of five respondents reported finding value in collaborating with IT, rather than trying to circumvent them, while doing so with increased innovation, security and Speed ​​cited. In addition, 76% of business technologists consider enterprise risk ownership, or believe that it is their responsibility to ensure that their work is safe, complies with regulatory requirements and does not negatively impact others.

A Gartner analysis shows that organizations that successfully enable business technologists are 2.6 times more likely to accelerate digital business results.

“Business technologists expand the strategic reach of CIOs as IT empowers employees across the enterprise to build digital capabilities to make or save money,” Gelders said. “Focusing hiring efforts and investments to fully take advantage of this resource base provides a huge opportunity for CIOs to work with other enterprise business leaders.”