Enterprises with high-performing IT organizations outgrow their peers because their IT organizations effectively collaborate with the business to cocreate value. IT finance is a foundational capability in this value “cocreation”, yet many teams are still early in their evolution. Upcoming Forrester research shows that roughly half of IT finance practices remain at early stages of spend management maturity. This erodes alignment between IT and the business, limits the adaptivity needed to redirect resources quickly, and weakens the trust required for transparent, data-driven decisions. These shortcomings directly influence your ability to prioritize investments, justify transformation, and demonstrate value. In 2026, I’ll provide prescriptive guidance to help your IT Finance practice become a catalyst — not a constraint — for innovation.
Accelerating the IT Finance Maturity Journey
Introspectively, IT Finance leaders need help maturing their practices. The most frequent pain points I hear in conversations are (1) defending IT budgets, (2) implementing the right showback/chargeback structure, and (3) mapping IT spend to business outcomes. These are tough challenges because they require determining which of multiple options is the best fit for your organization. They also require buy-in from a diverse range of stakeholders, each with different sets of priorities. I’ll be tackling these and other pain points in 2026 so that CIOs can get more out of their IT Finance practices.
Preparing for AI’s Escalating Impact
AI investment is skyrocketing, but value realization is lagging behind. Tech leaders are asking hard questions: How do we translate incremental time savings into real capacity gains? When does AI shift from “project ROI” to “enterprise capability”? How should we prepare for changes in AI cost curves as we move from POCs to full scale production? These questions matter because AI success will come from leaders who can both contain costs and operationalize value at scale.
This year, I’ll be working closely with analysts across Forrester like Brian Hopkins, Fred Giron, Kevin Ogunsua, Aaron Katz and Tracy Woo to produce actionable frameworks that help you quantify AI outcomes, right-size investment, and integrate AI financial governance into your broader portfolio strategy.
Evaluating the Evolving ITFM Software Market
In the market for an ITFM solution? I’ll be following up on last year’s with a full evaluation of the top ITFM Software vendors. The ITFM Software segment is an exciting one. Apptio legitimized the space over the last decade, however a number of sophisticated challengers are looking to own their piece of the market through creative user experience, broad data integrations, flexible cost transparency modeling and attractive pricing options.
This year’s evaluation will help you navigate that choice with confidence, distinguish meaningful innovation from noise, and align your ITFM tooling with your maturity goals.
Let Me Know What’s Important to You!
I’m here to help you turn 2026 into a year of breakthrough performance. We’re already a month in, so the time to get to work on this year’s targets is now. If you have a priority that’s missing from my agenda, drop me an email at [email protected] and I’ll add it! Or if you’re already thinking about these or any other topics, book a guidance session with me to talk about how to get things moving.
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