Among brick-and-mortar corporate functions such as Audit, Finance, Human Resources, Legal, and Public Communications, would Enterprise IT eventually become irrelevant or obsolete?
Some business units argue yes — largely driven by poor past experiences with IT support and system reliability. From lack of agility to bureaucracy and limited business understanding, Enterprise IT has indeed, in many cases, impeded business growth.
Today, technology development and application usage are no longer confined to technology professionals. With the growing maturity and abundance of generative AI, cloud computing and storage, configurable ERPs, RPA, and outsourcing services, business units with embedded IT capabilities (“Business IT”) can readily assemble self-sustaining solutions at a fraction of the cost charged by centralized Enterprise IT. Even for highly specialised areas such as cybersecurity or enterprise architecture, businesses can engage external consultants with a broader and deeper range of expertise than in-house teams.
Another perceived advantage is cost control. Business IT enjoys direct control over technology spending — from headcount to capital and maintenance costs. Subscription-based models allow better management of fixed baseline capacity, while scaling up or down during peak and lull periods without long-term commitments.
Business IT can also eliminate overheads associated with enterprise-wide solutions that are often feature-rich but excessive for specific needs. By selecting best-fit tools, business units become more responsive to functional and technological changes. The result is faster decision-making, shorter product cycles, and increased innovation.
It is therefore unsurprising that many business leaders praise embedded IT teams for their up-to-date business knowledge — an area where Enterprise IT is often perceived to lag behind. Frequent interaction and close proximity foster camaraderie, trust, and a strong sense of technology ownership.
But the picture is not quite so rosy if we look deeper.
A Counter Corporate Perspective
From a corporate standpoint, user-centric services, consistent branding, and enterprise-wide optimisation are often top priorities. Technology solutions that translate into seamless workflows, service efficiency, and product reliability shape user experience and corporate culture. Siloed IT functions with disjointed processes, fragmented data, and inconsistent user interfaces across platforms frustrate users and weaken Board-level governance.
Greater autonomy and decision-making authority also come with additional accountability: security risks, technology obsolescence, vendor dependency, and workforce management. Unfortunately, these responsibilities are often treated as afterthoughts, catching Business IT off-guard.
Cloud services and outsourcing represent delegation, not abdication. Ownership of outcomes, including service disruptions and cyber breaches remains firmly with the organisation. Even seemingly isolated user complaints or minor system defects often require experienced technologists to identify deeper systemic issues and intervene before larger failures occur.
Single Sourcing Strategy
Technology cost structures are complex, but broadly consist of one-time and recurring costs for hardware, software, maintenance, and services. Basic economics applies: volume purchasing especially software licensing delivers significant cost advantages. A larger enterprise-wide user base can substantially reduce total cost of ownership over time.
The same applies when organisations standardise ERP platforms from a single principal vendor across functions such as HR, Finance, Service Desk, and others.
A self-directed, divide-and-conquer approach erodes corporate purchasing power.
Single Source of Truth
Business workflows are inherently interconnected. When these workflows depend on heterogeneous systems across multiple Business IT units, data becomes fragmented and processes inefficient. A Single Source of Truth typically enabled through data warehouses, business intelligence platforms, and related technologies aggregates data from siloed systems.
Its importance cannot be overstated, particularly for high-quality analytics, planning, and decision-making.
Single Data Language
Siloed systems with proprietary data structures, formats, and semantics increase management costs and cybersecurity risk. A data dictionary defines what data means, how it is structured, where it originates, and how it should be used across the enterprise.
It acts as a common language — ensuring consistent understanding and preventing misinterpretation or misuse. As an authoritative reference, it compels data owners to follow consistent lifecycle practices, from creation and modification to retention, backup, and archival.
Single Workforce Governance
Equity in job scope, compensation, and career progression for the same profession is a sensitive corporate issue. Should technologists embedded within non-technical business units operating smaller and less complex environments be placed on the same pay scales as Enterprise IT staff?
Ensuring fair performance evaluation and rewards is particularly challenging. Without enterprise-wide calibration, assessments are prone to leniency, favouritism, and rater bias.
Personnel overheads associated with Business IT can amount to as much as 20% of base compensation, including recruitment, training, coaching, workspace, equipment, and productivity loss from attrition. Technology teams are not self-managing; they require active leadership and mentoring. High-potential performers often leave quickly in search of broader challenges and career advancement, which smaller units struggle to offer due to limited senior roles.
Single Enterprise Architecture
Enterprise architecture is typically a Board-approved artefact. It governs IT strategy and mandates technology standards across the organisation — including endpoints, server platforms, data models, integration patterns, and essential security controls such as VPNs, single sign-on, and multi-factor authentication, whether on-premises or in the cloud.
The objective is to simplify the technology landscape, reduce skills fragmentation, enhance organisational agility, and lower lifecycle costs.
Conclusion
No Enterprise IT ultimately means no governance.
When strategic and technology decisions are made solely in the interests of individual business units, fragmented and territorial behaviours emerge. Teams become unaware or unconcerned about the downstream impact of their decisions on other systems and processes.
With potentially multiple CIOs, AI models, disconnected cyber defences, and divergent business processes, the cumulative cost of decentralised Business IT is often higher than that of a well-run central IT function. The persistent stereotype of Enterprise IT frequently overlooks the operational complexity it manages and the governance gaps that arise not from centralisation itself, but from weak enforcement and unclear accountability.
Copyedit: ChatGPT 5.2