Technology Buy Decisions Moving to End Users

Could VARs be soon marketing their wares directly to the end users instead of company buyers? According to a new poll out this week by Unisys Corp., perhaps so. The poll found that the majority of today’s information workers so value the innovative technology they use for work that they’d be willing to pull out their own pocket books if they could choose it for themselves.

In an online poll of 141 information workers (dubbed iWorkers by Unisys), 32 percent of respondents said they’d be willing to spend the full cost of their jobs’ IT tools if they had the freedom to choose what they could use. Another 21 percent said they would pay half the cost and an additional 21 percent said they would fund up to 30 percent of the cost.

"In the face of increasing employee demand, IT organizations need to consider new models for end-user support that increase iWorkers’ satisfaction and productivity," Sam Gross, vice president of global IT outsourcing solutions for Unisys, said in a statement. "By doing so, management can also create potential for significant cost savings by letting employees choose and pay for the productivity technology they’re most comfortable with rather than compel them to use company-provided tools."

Unisys released the recent poll results in conjunction with a much more comprehensive study of over 2,800 information workers and 650 IT purchasers that it commissioned IDC to conduct to ferret out more information about the consumerization of IT.

It showed that even as 95 percent of workers bring at least one self-purchased device to work, 70 percent of IT decision makers will continue to buy products through traditional models.

"By clinging to old ways in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, employers could miss a golden opportunity to mobilize and unleash the innovation of an army of tech-savvy employees who want to use the technologies they rely on in their personal lives for work," Gross said.