More than 80% of business and technology leaders expect their budgets to increase over the next 12 months, with as many as one-quarter anticipating growth of 10% or more, according to Forrester’s 2027 Budget Planning Guides.
The guides are based on a global survey of more than 2,600 business and technology decision-makers across industries and functions, and provide spending benchmarks and recommendations for technology and security, B2B and B2C marketing, customer experience, digital strategy, and revenue operations leaders.
According to Forrester, business and technology leaders are approaching 2027 with renewed confidence as they increasingly accept volatility as a permanent feature of the business environment, following a year of more cautious spending.
Optimism is widespread across functions. Eighty-two percent of technology decision-makers and 91% of marketers expect budget increases in 2027, while more than half (55%) of customer experience leaders anticipate spending growth of 5% or more, up from 39% a year ago.
The guides are designed to help organizations prioritize investments, identify opportunities to reduce spending, and evaluate where AI can create competitive advantage.
“Business leaders are no longer planning for a return to stability – they’re planning for a future where volatility is a constant,” said Sharyn Leaver, Chief Research Officer, Forrester.
“The organizations that outperform in 2027 won’t be those that spend the most on AI. They’ll be the ones that invest in the foundations that make AI effective: trusted data, strong governance, organizational readiness, and the ability to continuously adapt as technology and customer behavior evolve.”
Recommendations from Forrester
Areas to increase budget in 2027
- Enterprise context that agents can act on. Build machine-readable information and provide governed enterprise knowledge that enables AI agents to contextualize and navigate business policies, processes, and systems with greater accuracy.
- Brand visibility in answer engines. As AI-powered answer engines increasingly influence buyer decision-making, marketers must prioritize answer engine optimization (AEO) to improve brand visibility and share of voice in AI-generated results.
Areas to decrease budget in 2027
- Tech debt that slows AI and productivity. Instead of cutting spend across all data cleanup efforts, focus on targeted fixes that improve data quality, data accessibility, and developer or agent productivity to unlock immediate value from AI investments.
- AI pilots that scale activity without organizational readiness. Eliminate AI initiatives that lack governance, clear ownership, success criteria, or a defined path to scale.
Areas for experimentation in 2027
- Synthetic data to accelerate insights generation. Test synthetic data alongside traditional customer research to accelerate learning, improve concept testing, and establish clear guardrails for where synthetic insights can be used reliably and responsibly.
- AI agents that enable marketing operations and customer-facing experiences. Experiment with agentic capabilities that improve content production, audience generation, brand governance, and customer engagement
You can access the full report here.
