Tech decision-makers are most optimistic about increasing their budget expectations for the coming year
LONDRES, September 09, 2024–(BUSINESS WIRE)–According to Forrester’s (Nasdaq: FORR) 2025 Budget Planning Guides, executives plan to spend more in 2025 after a year of fiscal restraint. Despite high interest rates, tight labor markets and U.S. election uncertainty, 91% of global technology decision-makers and 87% of marketing decision-makers plan budget increases in the coming year. However, the pressure to optimize spend and drive efficiencies remains a priority for organizations. Therefore, to make the most of increased budgets, executives must invest in cross-functional efforts that have a significant impact on business growth.
Forrester’s Budget Planning Guides provide data-backed recommendations to leaders in technology and security, B2B and B2C marketing, customer experience (CX), digital strategy, and sales and revenue operations so they can make informed planning and budgeting decisions for the year ahead. The guides also include benchmarks on spending intentions and recommendations on areas for experimentation, deepening investments, and divestment of budget allocations. Below are some key takeaways from Forrester’s 2025 Budget Planning Guides.
Areas where investments are expected to increase in 2025:
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Cross-functional efforts to deliver connected experiences. Companies with aligned marketing, digital, and CX teams experience 1.6x faster revenue growth and 1.4x higher customer retention than their peers. To ensure alignment, decision-makers must invest in customer journeys that deeply intertwine functional teams and business units.
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Capabilities and frameworks for AI governance and trust. As AI deployments become ubiquitous, companies must invest in developing policies and frameworks around data access, use, sharing, storage, and retention to maintain customer and employee trust. This also requires security and privacy investments in approaches such as advanced encryption, data masking, differential privacy, and data clean rooms.
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Areas where investments are expected to decline in 2025:
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A journey map without a goal. CX leaders often struggle to build momentum and implement their journey mapping efforts. Therefore, they should scale back journey mapping initiatives that lack a clear goal, an executive champion, or customer insights.
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Custom technology stacks. Leaders need to inventory and replace their bespoke applications and isolated infrastructure that serves only one or a few applications. Addressing this proliferation requires upfront investment to reduce technical debt and deliver high-performance IT services.
Areas of experimentation in 2025:
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Platform teams that break down silos and innovate. Platform teams are cross-functional, product-centric teams that build and maintain tools, infrastructure, and services, enabling other IT and business teams to build, deploy, and manage their applications. Platform teams deliver value to stakeholders by improving alignment and eliminating bottlenecks.
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Quantum security. As cybercriminals amass sensitive data that is vulnerable to quantum attacks, leaders must keep up with post-quantum (PQ) cryptographic developments and experiment with PQ security solutions to isolate critical assets and protect their organizations from data breaches.
“An optimistic budget outlook will serve executives well as they head into 2025, but they should be very careful about investing in areas that support their overall business growth,” said Sharyn Leaver, research director at Forrester. “Decision makers should continue to experiment with more advanced AI capabilities in 2025, but they shouldn’t rest on their laurels. They should prioritize investments that benefit their entire business and help build long-term trust with customers and partners. Forrester’s budget planning guides provide detailed guidance on where executives should strategically invest, exit, and experiment to thrive in a context of continued and rapid change.”
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About Forrester
Forrester (Nasdaq: FORR) is one of the world’s most influential research and advisory companies. We help technology, customer experience, digital, marketing, sales, and product leaders use customer obsession to accelerate growth. Forrester’s proprietary research, consulting, and events empower leaders worldwide to be bold at work, manage change, and put customers at the center of their leadership, strategy, and operations. Our unique insights are based on annual surveys of more than 700,000 consumers, business, and technology executives worldwide; rigorous, objective research methodologies, including The Forrester Wave™ assessments; and the shared wisdom of our clients. Learn more at Forrester.com.
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