How to plan for a new business technology operating model

You don’t need an LLM to tell you what the biggest change to IT departments is this year. The evidence is everywhere.  

Take for example our latest Pulse C-suite survey, published in January where 86% of surveyed executives plan to up their investment in generative AI in 2025, and 60% expecting their gen AI solutions to be scaled across the business — a major jump from 36% in 2024.  

The second-order impacts of this spending are being strategized, architected, and designed in real time, and we’re seeing the early signs of emerging technologies like agentic AI being used to reinvent core capabilities in businesses — especially now, in light of new tariffs. The impact of agentic AI on enterprise architecture, interoperability, platforms, and SaaS has yet to be fully scoped, but the changes will be fundamental.  

With such dramatic transformations, it won’t be enough for tech leaders to adjust individual processes and approaches, and put them under the control of one department. Instead, business leaders need to reconsider how technology and its practitioners need to be guided, managed, controlled, and measured when they deliver value and work directly in every part of the enterprise.  

Word on the street

Another report examines the changing role of technology in today’s enterprise, and how CEOs and their leadership teams reinvent their organizations for the era of AI and beyond. This report draws from Accenture’s firsthand experience delivering AI-powered reinvention across our internal corporate functions, and for clients deploying gen AI to unlock new sources of value, innovation, and growth. We also consulted a range of academics and other transformation leaders for their insights on how future enterprises will operate in the age of gen AI. 

When viewed in aggregate, these insights point toward a new operating model for technology, one that’s mapped across the entire enterprise. This model is moving from a relatively vertical column of technology and technologists reporting to an IT department, to a new enterprise technology blueprint, with teams and individuals infused with and financed by the business.  

But this doesn’t mean tech spending will decrease. The top reason cited by nearly one in three executives to increase gen AI investments is to capitalize on tech advances. According to the leaders we spoke to, the scope and scale of what a traditional IT department does will change significantly, and the ROI on rising IT investments will need to be earned by a new embedded model for enterprise technology.  

Part of the solution

The CIO role remains essential as they’ll continue to be the center point for IT governance and decisions. And their role will be elevated to that of a trusted advisor to the CEO and rest of the C-suite, rather than reporting to other executive positions. The business will be more involved in shaping an intersectional business and technology strategy, and more technology work will take place in the business, with practitioners operating under corporate guidelines created by the CIO.  

“IT is critical to every aspect of a business unit’s performance,” says Alan Thorogood from MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research. “Business units now incorporate technologies like AI throughout their operations. They take ownership of data and its acceptable uses, and are moving into low- and no-code software development, systems engineering, and integration, so enterprises must examine their IT organization to ensure they have the right skills both in IT and business units.” 

Business leaders need to think deeply about this profound shift to a technology operating model, and any strategy should include those working in traditional IT departments, and those working with and deploying existing and new technologies directly in business teams. Here’s what we’ve learned:  

1. Out of IT and into the business  

The pressure’s on for technologists to move closer to where technology creates business value. The rise of self-service capabilities, such as low-code/no code platforms, and autonomous systems means that business units can now handle many technical tasks that previously required IT intervention. This democratization of data and technology is creating a new situation where technology expertise exists throughout the organization rather than being concentrated in a single department. And this is turn suggests the future will be a flatter, de-siloed organization.  

Today, for example, it may be clear if a person works in HR or in the business. Our interviewees pointed toward a trend where new, cross-functional roles are emerging as companies combine responsibilities to take account of the rising use of technology.  

2. A new era of human-AI collaboration 

AI is fundamentally changing how technology work gets done. Intelligent AI coaches now automate complex workflows and augment decision-making processes, enabling organizations to do more with less in AI-augmented ways. This shift reduces experience gaps, accelerates onboarding times, and creates new challenges in governance and oversight. 

The relationship between human workers and AI systems is evolving into a collaborative partnership. Organizations must cultivate environments that help people learn and change, where both human employees and AI systems can grow and improve together. This includes developing new governance frameworks and policies that support a culture of AI responsibility throughout an organization while ensuring employees feel involved in driving this change.  

3. Fluid boundaries and new leadership challenges 

The boundaries between business and IT are blurring, requiring boards and C-suite executives to develop deeper technical competencies, particularly in AI.  

Many C-suite leaders are now expected to know as much about the technology driving their function as the strategy. And the demands will change as agentic AI systems continue to reshape the future business and enterprise architectures, as well as their interoperability.  

“In a lot of ways, the IT department of every company is going to be the HR department of AI agents in the future,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during this year’s CES. “Today, they manage and maintain a bunch of software from the IT industry. In the future, they’ll maintain, nurture, onboard, and improve digital agents and provision them to the companies to use.” 

While much attention has been paid to increasing technological literacy among business leaders, an equal emphasis needs to be put on developing business acumen among technology professionals. If you consider many of today’s leading technology companies, they’re led by tech people who’ve learned the business rather than the other way around.  

A new way forward no matter what comes next  

Much of the current change is being driven by AI, with agentic AI following closely on its heels. But the next big technology change will probably happen in months, not years, whether that’s a major step closer to mainstream quantum computing or the emergence of a cognitive digital brain. A new, flexible business technology operating model will position leaders to take advantage of whatever is latest and greatest, in the parts of their business where it matters most.