Recalibrating IT Budgets in the AI Era
Register for the 2026 benchmarking initiative developed together with McKinsey & Company
Meet Your Expert
Dr. Christopher Boortz
Partner
Strategic Service Consulting GmbH
Dr. Christopher Boortz leads global initiatives in IT Financial Management (ITFM), TBM and FinOps to uncover value drivers in IT, enabling customers to overcome their budgeting challenges.
Join Benchmark 2026
AI and IT Value
AI is increasing pressure on technology budgets. Organizations need to fund AI and innovation while managing rising run costs, legacy complexity, cloud spend, and security requirements.¹
The benchmark turns IT cost data into decision-ready insights: where you are efficient, where costs are out of line, and where to optimize, defend, or reinvest.
What the Benchmark Helps You Achieve
Defend and prioritize IT spend
Understand how your IT budget, run/change structure, and cost position compare with relevant peers and market benchmarks.
Identify where action is needed
Pinpoint key cost drivers, inefficiencies, and improvement potential through IT tower analyses, service TCO, and unit cost transparency.
Show where IT is already creating value
Demonstrate areas of cost efficiency to business partners, finance stakeholders, and executive leadership.
Plan where to optimize or reinvest
Receive actionable optimization insights, concrete hypotheses, and a Benchmark-to-IT-Value report to support budget planning, procurement, and strategy updates.
Your Effort
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Typically only 1–3 days of effort
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Standardized data collection approach
Why this Approach
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Brings together the Serviceware service excellence approach, TBM expertise and a methodology developed together with McKinsey
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Focus on fast and reliable insights
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Access to validated market benchmark data
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Annual benchmarking initiative with peer exchange
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Designed to support budget planning, procurement, and strategy updates
“It took me less than a day to compile the requested data from the Serviceware system. An effort worthwhile for the wealth of information that comes with the benchmark report.”
Senior IT Controller, Automotive/Aerospace
“The level of differentiation and granularity in this benchmark provides valuable transparency. It confirms our cost efficiency in End User Services and IT overhead, while highlighting improvement potential in server costs and IT security. This enables us to take targeted measures to further optimize our cost position and to clearly demonstrate the impact of previous initiatives to the business.”
Head of IT, Industrial Manufacturing
“Great set of KPI not only for benchmarking but to continuously steer IT. (...)”
VP Digitilization Controlling & Finance, Chemical
“The benchmark confirms that our strategic direction is on track: driving cost efficiency in run & maintain while reinvesting savings into modern technologies. This will strengthen our ability to demonstrate value to the business and further enforce disciplined, value-based prioritization of future technology investments to avoid low-return commitments.”
CIO, Oil & Gas