You don’t need to be an old hand to have worked in an environment where IT’s primary focus was system governance, often operating as a cost center.
Over the past several years, IT has re-emerged as something quite different. As Grant Thornton wrote in a recent research report, the function is now “an agile enabler of opportunity,” helping eliminate lost opportunity costs through fit-for-purpose technology.
In that vein, the top goal for companies’ technology investments in 2025 is resource optimization, while bottom-line savings was well down the list, as revealed by Grant Thornton’s survey of 552 executives.
Almost all (93%) of survey participants said their companies are boosting their technology spending this year, and 65% pegged the size of the increase as at least 6%. But it’s a different type of spending than was historically prevalent, according to the report.
“The competitive edge is no longer in large, monolithic systems, but in phased, right-sized transformations that fit the business need and can scale effectively,” Grant Thornton wrote. “The old playbook of big-bang deployments is fading fast. Leaders are adopting more iterative approaches that allow them to adapt quickly.”
Instead of projects that take two or three years, today’s technology allows for modularized deployment that can be halted if the project is not delivering the expected value.
But what the report called “the efficiency imperative” is about more than choosing the right technology; it’s also about empowering employees to help drive strategies that align technology usage with frontline needs.
A majority (59%) of survey respondents placed user adoption challenges among the top three reasons technology initiatives have failed at their organizations.
“Companies that engage employees in shaping new technology use — through early demos, feedback loops and user-led design — see faster adoption and stronger returns,” said Mike Hennessey, a principal in Grant Thornton’s business consulting practice.
He noted that doing so also allows companies to quickly see who their upcoming leaders and high-potential employees are. And if a company’s technology feels dated, it will be challenged to attract or retain top talent.
Yet, when it comes to measuring the ROI of technology investments, survey respondents ranked employee satisfaction at the bottom of the list. The report suggested that company leaders should work to make sure employees see how the technology being implemented will benefit them.
At the same time, though, executives don’t necessarily trust that the quality of their companies’ data is sufficient to support technology initiatives. About a third (32%) said their data quality needs work.
“Many organizations are rethinking what qualifies as valuable data,” Grant Thornton wrote. “In a time of dashboard overload, employee experience, sentiment and peer-to-peer feedback generate a richer story by capturing adoption trends and obstacles.
