2025 is getting closer, and technology leaders are at a crossroads. They have to deal with economic, technical, and political uncertainty. Because of these problems, it’s essential to be able to plan and change your plans for the coming year. Forrester’s high-performance IT model stands out as a leader, calling for an intelligent mix of investments, divestments, and new ideas specific to each company’s wants and goals and entirely in line with their business strategy.
The strategic role of technology will continue to move forward, no matter what problems we face. So, Forrester’s study shows that people who make technology decisions are generally optimistic. 91% of those decision-makers think IT funds will go up for the next fiscal year. This will lead to a 5.3% rise in global tech purchases in 2024. This hope comes from four important strategy goals:
- Improving employees’ skills to meet the needs of future work.
- Increasing software investments to spur new ideas.
- Making sure infrastructure is stable to support business performance.
- Using outsourcing to fill skills gaps and boost robustness.
Forrester’s Budget Planning Guide 2025:
Technology Executives tells you exactly where to put your money to work and where you can lower your spending priorities.
Put money into your practical AI future.
People talked and asked many questions about the AI change last year. Even though we still strongly believe in an AI future, things are moving more slowly this year because tech leaders know they must deal with worries about AI skills, control, security, and return on investment (ROI). According to Forrester’s Budget Planning Survey, 2024, 92% of technology leaders plan to increase their data management and AI spending. This shows that they are very serious about improving their AI skills. However, these efforts could be better if we have a plan based on high-performance IT concepts. To prepare for your AI future, you should put money into things like high-quality, well-governed data, robust AI control systems, a scalable and safe design, and learning a wide range of skills. Putting knowledge management at the top of the list can also greatly increase employee output by making it easier for them to find information and encouraging new ideas.
Stay away from cloud sprawl and automate manual tasks as much as possible.
We’ve already talked about how good it is that tech budgets are going up, but we also need to remember that global inflation is currently at 5.9%, which means that tech execs will have to rethink how they spend their IT budgets. Setting up FinOps practices to efficiently handle cloud costs, using cloud cost management and optimization tools for better insight and cost optimization, and adjusting resources to deal with the rise in VMware costs following the Broadcom acquisition are some of the most important strategies. Also, it’s important to get rid of technology sprawl and technical debt by combining separate tech stacks and custom apps. Top IT companies spend 10 to 30 percent of their funds on this.
Try to get rid of silos and cut down on time to market.
It would help if you thought of new ways to make a great plan (and budget). Technology is the same. Technology executives should try out a wide range of tools and ways of organizing things to build value for the future. For instance, platform teams make it easier for everyone to work together on making apps by breaking down silos and improving tools and infrastructure. Multimodal generative AI promises to unleash imagination and create more personalized user experiences by handling different data types. This will improve the creation of content and exchanges with customers. Synthetic data is becoming an important tool for teaching AI because it provides high-quality data that doesn’t violate privacy and lowers social issues. Application creation platforms combine low-code and AI-assisted development, significantly cutting the time and money needed to make software. Additionally, since quantum computing is on the horizon, it is important to invest in post-quantum security to avoid future data leaks and keep private data safe from quantum-computing threats. Not only do these new ideas look like they will break down organizational silos, but they will also help companies win in their markets by making them faster and more flexible.
