Across boardrooms, a persistent query echoes: Is our expanding technology budget translating into results? While 2025 ushered in substantial budgets alongside elevated expectations, many businesses observed a disconnect between investment and performance. Looking ahead to 2026, triumph will not favour those spending the most. Instead, it will be won by those effectively translating expenditure into outcomes and business value. This requires a virtuous approach: ensuring transparency and tied business outcomes, governance over AI, and seamless integration of Technology Business Management in everyday decision making.

The insights from our latest global survey highlight this reality. Executives are prioritising cybersecurity and AI while wrestling with ROI confidence and data trust. The way forward? Enterprise financial intelligence. It’s a pivotal data layer connecting cost, usage, and value across finance, IT, and business. A shared, defensible source of truth accelerates decisions, aligns funding with value, and fosters responsible innovation scaling. Yet, many still grapple with disconnected silos that impede their technology investments from realising their full potential.

Our 2026 Technology Investment Management Report delineates evolving investment planning, persistent management capability gaps, and executive strategies to harness value. Bridging these challenges demands pragmatic solutions: unifying business insights, modernising IT financial management (ITFM) for enhanced IT planning, optimising FinOps for cloud value maximisation, refining Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) for resource allocation, and governing AI innovations with foresight to yield tangible results.

Despite expanding technology investments—evidenced by 74% of survey participants noting increased IT & software spending—confidence remains elusive. 25% reported noticeable surges; still, many leaders doubt their capacity to convert funding into tangible business outcomes. Disparate financial and operational insights slow decision-making and chip away at executive trust.

While AI and cybersecurity draw focus, handling runaway costs remains paramount. As revealed, 67% of AI funding is expected to be allocated from existing budgets, not net-new funding, compelling teams to responsibly reallocate resources. Many believe they manage IT spend adeptly, yet reality diverges when priorities shift and capability gaps become apparent.

Cloud and AI introduce unprecedented fluctuations in expenditure. As consumption intensifies, traditional planning and accountability struggle to evolve. Leaders are reassessing how visibility, ownership, and funding align in these dynamic settings, acknowledging shortfalls in managing AI-driven or containerised workloads.

AI, cybersecurity, and digital transformation are now indispensable, but not beyond scrutiny. Executive teams are imparting more stringent measures on innovation funding, focusing not on ambition, but achieving clear outcomes, governance frameworks, and demonstrating value.

Where previously static, organisations now harness real-time decision-making, informed by the alignment of financial and operational data to outcomes. These shifts presage a broader trend detailed in our full survey report, offering comprehensive analysis on evolving decision-making amidst an investment landscape recalibrating towards true competitive advantage.