Planning Your 2027 Tech Budget? Start With These Questions.

Every year, businesses go through the budgeting process, and every year, some expenses are easier to evaluate than others. We know because we do it at Pixo, too. You look at what you spent last year, think about what might change, and try to make good decisions about where your money will go.

Software can be one of those expenses that doesn’t get much scrutiny. You renew subscriptions, add a few users, remove a few others, account for price increases, and move on. After all, the software is already there, and people are using it. But what if the software you’re paying for isn’t really doing what you need it to do? What if your employees are spending hours working around its limitations? Or what if you’re paying for several tools that essentially do the same thing?

Whether your next fiscal year starts in January or follows a different schedule, budget planning is a good opportunity to look at your software investments a little differently. Not just what they cost, but what they’re doing for your business and whether they’ll still make sense a few years from now.

Here are some questions worth asking yourself and your team before you carry those software expenses into another year.

Start by making a list of the software your organization uses. Not just the big systems everyone knows about, but the smaller subscriptions, department-specific tools, and applications that have accumulated over the years.

Then ask:

• What software are we paying for, and what was each tool supposed to accomplish when we bought it?
• Who uses each tool, and how often? Are we paying for accounts or features nobody uses?
• Is each tool still solving the problem we bought it for, or has that problem changed?
• Which tools were always a compromise because nothing quite fit what we needed?
• Are we using the software well, or would training help us get more value from what we’re already paying for?

Businesses change, and software decisions that made sense five years ago may not make sense today. Imagine you’re paying for a premium software system, but your team uses only a handful of its capabilities. You might be paying for features your business doesn’t need. On the other hand, maybe the system could be doing much more for you, but nobody has had the time or training to use it effectively.

Those situations call for very different solutions. One might mean switching to something simpler and less expensive. The other might mean investing in training so you can finally get the value you’re already paying for.

The subscription price is only part of what software costs your business. There’s also the time people spend entering information, looking for what they need, correcting mistakes, and finding ways around things the software doesn’t do well. Some of those costs never appear in a budget report because they’re hidden in everyday work.

This is where we’d encourage you to talk with the people who use your software, not just the people who approve the invoices. Ask them:

• How long does it take to enter, find, or export the information you need?
• Where are you entering the same information twice because systems don’t talk to each other?
• What tasks do you dread or put off because the technology makes them difficult?
• Are you creating your own spreadsheets, keeping sticky notes, or finding other workarounds because your software doesn’t give you the information you need in a way you can use?
• If you could fix one thing about the tools you use every day, what would it be?

That final question might be the most valuable one you ask. Your employees know which tasks take 20 minutes when they should take two. They know which information is difficult to find and which processes require three different systems to accomplish one thing. Sometimes those frustrations have become so routine that nobody thinks to question them anymore.

And if you’re the person using these tools every day rather than the person approving the budget, this is a good time to speak up. You may know about frustrations and workarounds that nobody else realizes are costing the business time. Bringing those problems into the budgeting conversation could be the first step toward fixing them.

Over time, organizations tend to accumulate software one problem at a time. Marketing needs something, operations needs something else, and accounting has its own systems. Each purchase may have made perfect sense individually, but nobody necessarily stopped to consider how everything works together.

Now you might have eight tools, seven of which overlap in some way, and employees are responsible for keeping information consistent between them. As you review your budget, consider:

• Are we paying for several tools that do similar things, and could one replace some of them?
• Which systems need to share information but currently don’t?
• If we need to keep a few core tools, would connecting them solve more problems than replacing them?

The goal isn’t necessarily to use fewer tools. It’s to have the right tools working together in a way that makes sense for your business. Sometimes that means eliminating overlapping subscriptions. Sometimes it means replacing software that’s never been a good fit. And sometimes it means keeping the systems you already like and building a connection between them so information moves where it needs to go without someone having to move it manually.

Budgeting isn’t just about what your business needs today. It’s also about where you want to be next year and the years after that. Maybe you’re planning to add employees, open another location, expand your services, or serve more customers. Maybe your organization is changing how it operates, and the processes that worked when you were smaller are becoming harder to manage.

Your software needs to support those plans, so ask yourself:

• Where do we want the business to be in one, three, and five years, and can our current software get us there?
• What will we need to do next year that our tools can’t do today?
• What happens if a tool we depend on raises its prices, changes significantly, or goes away?
• Are we relying on software that’s outdated, unsupported, or creating security risks?
• What would happen to our business if one of our most important systems stopped working tomorrow?

These questions aren’t necessarily reasons to replace anything. They’re reasons to understand what your business depends on and whether those systems are ready for what’s next. A tool that’s working perfectly well today might become a bottleneck as your business grows, while another might continue serving you for years with a few improvements. The important thing is to recognize those possibilities before they become urgent problems.

When businesses make a major investment in a building, vehicle, or piece of equipment, they generally look beyond the purchase price. They think about how long they’ll use it, what it will cost to maintain, and whether it will help the business operate more effectively. We think software deserves that same kind of attention, even when you’re paying for it monthly.

For your 2027 budget, consider looking at the costs and benefits over one, three, and five years:

• Are we treating software as an expense to carry forward or an investment that should provide value?
• Are we budgeting for the ongoing maintenance, support, and improvement of our software, not just the cost of using it?
• If we spent more in 2027, what could it save us in time, money, or frustration by 2029 or 2031?

Imagine your team spends several hours every week moving information between systems, checking that everything transferred correctly, and fixing mistakes. Over five years, that’s a lot of employee time devoted to a process that might not need to be manual.

Connecting those systems could require a larger investment in 2027, but it might save your business considerably more over the following years. And in some cases, building custom software could give your business something even more valuable: a solution designed around the way you work that can grow and change with you. Of course, sometimes the smartest investment is keeping what you have and helping your team use it better. Looking at the longer-term picture can help you decide which approach makes the most sense.

It’s hard to talk about planning a technology budget for 2027 without considering AI. But that doesn’t mean every business needs to add an AI project or another subscription. We’d approach it with the same questions we’re asking about the rest of your software. What problem are you trying to solve, and would this technology actually help?

Consider:

• Is there a specific, repetitive task where AI could make a meaningful difference, or are we considering it because everyone else is?
• Are we already paying for AI capabilities we aren’t using, and would they actually improve the way our team works?
• Can we trust the results enough for the work we’re asking AI to do, and where would people still need to review them?

AI might help your team find information, organize incoming requests, or reduce repetitive work. It might also turn out that a better integration, a simpler process, or a feature you already have would solve the problem more effectively. The goal isn’t to find a reason to use AI. It’s to find better ways to get work done.

After asking these questions, you might discover that your best move is surprisingly simple. Maybe you need to train your team to use what you already have. Maybe you can eliminate subscriptions nobody needs or consolidate several tools into one.

You might find that a system you’ve relied on for years was always a compromise, and it’s finally time to replace it. Or maybe your core software is doing its job, but connecting a couple of systems would eliminate hours of manual work every week. And sometimes you’ll discover a business need that your current software simply can’t address. That’s when building something new might be worth exploring.

There’s no single right answer for every organization. What matters is making those decisions deliberately instead of automatically carrying last year’s expenses into another year.

At Pixo, we understand that budgeting means making choices. We make them for our own business, too. And we know that spending more isn’t automatically better, just as spending less doesn’t always mean you’re saving money.

We’ve put together a worksheet to help you work through these questions with your team, take stock of the software you’re paying for, and identify where your technology investments might need another look.

If your review turns up something you’re not sure how to approach, we’d be happy to talk it through. Maybe you’re wondering whether to improve your current software, connect systems that don’t communicate, or invest in something built specifically for your business. You don’t need to have a project figured out. Just bring us the challenges you’re trying to solve, and we’ll help you explore your options.