Global budgets to boost investment in cross-functional efforts, AI governance

IT decision-makers around the world are set to increase their investments into cross-functional efforts for connected experiences and capabilities and frameworks for AI governance and trust.

This is according to research firm Forrester’s 2025 Budget Planning Guides, which found 91 per cent of global tech decision-makers and 87 per cent of global marketing decision-makers are planning for budget increases in the year ahead.

For cross-functional efforts, Forrester claimed that organisations with strong alignment across marketing, digital and customer experience (CX) teams report 1.6 times faster revenue growth compared to their peers, as well as 1.4 times better customer retention.

On the AI front, the firm said as deployments of the tech happen more often, organisations need to invest in building policies and frameworks around data access, usage, sharing, storage and retention to retain both customer and employee trust.

“This also requires security and privacy investments in approaches like advanced encryption, data masking, differential privacy and data clean rooms,” Forrester added.

Sharyn Leaver, chief research officer at Forrester, said optimistic budget expectations will serve leaders well, but they will also need to be “super thoughtful” about investing in areas that support 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,” she said.

Meanwhile, the areas expected to see a decrease in investment include journey-mapping without a purpose and bespoke tech stacks.

“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,” Forrester said.

As for bespoke tech stacks, the firm said that leaders should inventory and replace bespoke applications and isolated infrastructure that serves one or a few applications.

“Addressing this sprawl requires up-front investment to reduce technical debt and deliver high-performance IT,” Forrester said.

The firm also identified areas worth experimenting with in 2025 – platform teams and quantum security.

“Platform teams are cross-functional product-centric teams that build and maintain tooling, infrastructure and services, enabling other IT and business teams to build, deploy, and manage their applications,” Forrester said.

“Platform teams deliver value to stakeholders by improving alignment and eliminating bottlenecks.”

When it comes to quantum security, the firm added that decision-makers should follow post-quantum (PQ) cryptographic developments and experiment with PQ security solutions to protect critical assets.

In Australia and New Zealand, both customers and partners are expected to invest in security solutions during the 2025 financial year as a top priority.