Global tech & marketing leaders plan for budget increases
Forrester's 2025 Budget Planning Guides reveal an optimistic outlook among global tech and marketing leaders, with a significant majority planning for budget increases in the year ahead.
Despite economic challenges such as high interest rates, tight labour markets, and the uncertainty surrounding US elections, 91% of global tech decision-makers and 87% of global marketing decision-makers are preparing for increased budgets.
Forrester's guides offer data-driven recommendations for technology and security, B2B and B2C marketing, customer experience (CX), digital strategy, and sales and revenue operations leaders. These recommendations aim to help businesses make informed planning and budgeting decisions for 2025. Key insights include benchmarks and suggestions for areas to experiment, deepen investments, and divest budget allocations.
Highlighted areas for increased investment include cross-functional efforts to deliver connected experiences and capabilities for AI governance and trust. According to the guide, "Organisations with strong alignment among their marketing, digital, and CX teams report 1.6 times faster revenue growth than their peers and 1.4 times better customer retention." Investment in customer journeys where functional teams and business units have a strong interlock is recommended.
Furthermore, the guides recommend investment in building policies and frameworks around data access, usage, sharing, storage, and retention to retain customer and employee trust. This includes security and privacy investments in areas like advanced encryption, data masking, differential privacy, and data clean rooms to support AI deployments.
On the flip side, CX leaders are advised to reduce investments in journey-mapping without a clear objective. "CX leaders often struggle to build momentum and drive action from their mapping efforts. As a result, they should scale back journey-mapping initiatives that lack a clear objective, an executive champion, or customer insights," the guide states.
The guides also suggest reducing investment in bespoke tech stacks. Leaders are encouraged to inventory and replace bespoke applications and isolated infrastructure serving only one or a few applications. Addressing this sprawl requires up-front investment to reduce technical debt and deliver high-performance IT.
Areas recommended for experimentation include platform teams designed to break down silos and innovate, as well as quantum security. Platform teams, cross-functional and product-centric, are beneficial for building and maintaining tooling, infrastructure, and services that enable IT and business teams to build, deploy, and manage their applications. These teams aim to improve alignment and eliminate bottlenecks.
In the realm of security, the rise of quantum computing necessitates experimentation with post-quantum (PQ) cryptographic solutions to protect critical assets. As cybercriminals get access to sensitive data vulnerable to quantum attacks, leaders should monitor PQ cryptographic developments and engage with PQ security solutions to future-proof their organisations against breaches.
Sharyn Leaver, chief research officer at Forrester, commented on the guides, saying, "Optimistic budget expectations will serve leaders well as they enter 2025, but they need to be super thoughtful about investing in areas that support their firms' overall growth. While leaders should continue to experiment with more advanced AI capabilities in 2025, those shouldn't be the only experiments they pursue. They should prioritise investments that benefit their entire firm and help establish long-term trust with customers and partners."
Forrester's Budget Planning Guides continue to serve as a valuable resource for business leaders aiming to navigate the fast-paced and ever-changing economic landscape. The detailed guidance provided by these guides will be crucial for making strategic decisions about where to invest, pull back, and experiment to ensure long-term success and growth.
