- Reviewing purchases should put some reasonable controls around how much software you can accumulate. Adding to the tech stack has maintenance costs, and you don't really want to do it without some sort of review. In this case, it's not the dollars as much as the fit.
- With SaaS tools in particular, there are often privacy or security concerns. Those teams should review. Probably want legal's eyes on it to get the right terms in place as well. Again, less about the dollars here, and more about the agreement, risk, required disclosures (subprocessor, etc), and those kinds of factors.
- On the spend itself, you'd be surprised how this adds up, especially if folks are signing multi-year deals and not bothering to negotiate licensing. Remember, if it's easy for you and me to buy, it's easy for everyone else to buy too, and it multiplies quickly.
Now, on one-off hardware purchases and such, I agree it should be a lot easier. At least at the startup I work at, anything under $500 is just an expense report, so just make sure your manager is cool with it and go for it. But there are considerations here also around stuff coming in that IT or facilities then needs to support - obligating their time with your purchase is something you need to agree on or avoid.
EDIT: Also as someone else pointed out, grift on purchase orders is easy without any oversight.
- Reviewing purchases should put some reasonable controls around how much software you can accumulate. Adding to the tech stack has maintenance costs, and you don't really want to do it without some sort of review. In this case, it's not the dollars as much as the fit.
- With SaaS tools in particular, there are often privacy or security concerns. Those teams should review. Probably want legal's eyes on it to get the right terms in place as well. Again, less about the dollars here, and more about the agreement, risk, required disclosures (subprocessor, etc), and those kinds of factors.
- On the spend itself, you'd be surprised how this adds up, especially if folks are signing multi-year deals and not bothering to negotiate licensing. Remember, if it's easy for you and me to buy, it's easy for everyone else to buy too, and it multiplies quickly.
Now, on one-off hardware purchases and such, I agree it should be a lot easier. At least at the startup I work at, anything under $500 is just an expense report, so just make sure your manager is cool with it and go for it. But there are considerations here also around stuff coming in that IT or facilities then needs to support - obligating their time with your purchase is something you need to agree on or avoid.
EDIT: Also as someone else pointed out, grift on purchase orders is easy without any oversight.