According to budget planning guides from analyst firm Forrester, IT leaders intend to increase their spending in 2025 compared to 2024. The report, which is based on a survey of 2,200 business and technology executives, reveals that 91% of global tech decision-makers and 87% of global marketing decision-makers are anticipating budget increases for the coming year, despite prevailing challenges such as high interest rates and a tight labor market.
The survey also indicated that organizations with strong alignment between marketing, digital, and customer experience (CX) teams reported revenue growth that was 1.6 times faster and customer retention that was 1.4 times better than their less aligned peers. In her blog post, Forrester vice-president and group director Laura Koetzle emphasized the importance of ensuring functional alignment around customer journeys. She recommended that business and IT leaders invest in a shared journey map and prioritize key customer journeys. Koetzle also suggested enlisting an external partner for assistance and training if needed.
Continuing with the theme of cross-functional collaboration, Forrester advised platform teams to break down silos and foster innovation. These cross-functional, product-centric teams are responsible for building and maintaining the tools, infrastructure, and services that enable other IT and business units to develop, deploy, and manage their applications. Forrester highlighted that platform teams add value by enhancing alignment and reducing bottlenecks.
Koetzle urged technology leaders to minimize their organizations’ reliance on customized or isolated tech stacks. “Years of teams developing and maintaining their own applications or adhering to unique, ‘ideal’ architectures have led to significant technology sprawl and technical debt,” she noted. This accumulation results in unsustainable costs and overhead related to support, security, and training. Therefore, Koetzle recommended that IT leaders take stock of their custom applications and isolated infrastructure—especially where such infrastructure is only supporting a few applications. Despite requiring initial investment, she suggested replacing these applications.
Another key investment area identified by Forrester is artificial intelligence (AI) governance and trust. As AI becomes more prevalent, companies recognize the necessity of investing in policies and frameworks governing data access, usage, sharing, storage, and retention to maintain trust among customers and employees. This initiative also demands investments in security and privacy measures, including advanced encryption, data masking, differential privacy, and data clean rooms. “To maintain the trust of your customers and employees during AI deployments, determine and focus on the trust factors most relevant to your context,” Koetzle added.
Beyond AI governance, Forrester encourages IT and business leaders to utilize AI-powered chatbots to enhance buying, selling, and internal marketing functions. While some organizations have already begun employing AI chatbots for these purposes, Koetzle called on leaders to ensure that AI assistants possess capabilities that support go-to-market teams by facilitating information retrieval, automating tasks, exploring insights, and providing recommendations designed to enhance precision, productivity, and scalability.
Sharyn Leaver, Forrester’s chief research officer, stated, “While leaders should continue experimenting with advanced AI capabilities in 2025, these should not be their only focus. Investments that benefit the entire organization and establish long-term trust with customers and partners should take precedence.”
Forrester also predicted a decrease in spending on what it terms “journey-mapping without a purpose.” The firm noted that customer experience leaders frequently find it challenging to generate momentum and drive action from their mapping initiatives. It recommends scaling back any journey-mapping efforts that lack a clear objective, executive support, or customer insights.