How to Present the Case for a Larger IT Budget

A successful IT department requires knowledge, foresight, planning — and also a significant amount of money to fund everything from cloud services to strong security. Yet convincing management that IT needs a larger budget to address critical needs has never been easy. Complicating the task is the arrival of critical — and expensive — new technologies, such as AI, network automation, and growing data management demands. 

Making the Case 

Any conversation about budget increases should begin with a clear understanding of where funds are currently being spent, says William "Bill" Lobig, vice president, IBM automation product management. "This may seem obvious, but when looking at IT spend, it's not as simple as you may think," he states in an email interview. "IT leaders must enter the budget conversation positioning IT not as a cost-center, but as a true value driver across the business." 

The best way to ask for more money is to show how it will lead to tangible benefits, usually through increased revenue or reduced costs, says Sourya Biswas, technical director, risk management and governance, at cybersecurity consulting firm NCC Group, in an email interview. "However, the IT leader should be careful not to overestimate the benefits while underplaying the drawbacks." 

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Patrik Hachmann, senior director of business value engineering at enterprise software developer Software AG, agrees that the case for a larger budget should be presented as a value proposition. "As the monetary benefit of a platform can usually not be fully demonstrated across all use cases and from all angles, it's important to show that investment is already justified for the most important two or three initiatives alone," he explains in an online interview. 

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