After the summer holidays, many companies return to planning for the coming year with a similar set of topics: AI, data, cybersecurity, the cloud, ERP and automation. Each has a business case, but not every one deserves the same level of attention and funding. For the board and the CIO, the most important task is therefore not to identify further initiatives, but to agree on which three areas are of greatest importance to the company in the coming quarters.
This is a pivotal moment. According to Gartner’s latest forecast from July, global IT spending is set to reach $6.37 trillion in 2026, 14.2 per cent more than the previous year. Spending on data centres and IaaS is growing the fastest, driven by the expansion of AI infrastructure. At the same time, Gartner highlights budgetary pressures linked to hardware and memory prices, investments in AI, and shifting priorities.
In Poland, however, this pressure does not stem from a recessionary environment. The European Commission forecasts GDP growth of 3.5 per cent for 2026, with a high level of investment co-financed by EU funds. Capital for modernisation is available, but the quality of its allocation is becoming increasingly important.
From technology to results
AI is a good example. PwC surveyed 1,217 large organisations across 25 sectors. One-fifth of these companies account for 74 per cent of the economic value derived from AI. Leaders do not stand out solely because of the scale of their implementations. They are twice as likely to redesign processes around new technological capabilities, rather than simply adding further tools to their existing working model.
This shifts the discussion on priorities to a more practical level. Instead of debating whether AI, the cloud or data is of strategic importance, one can compare specific outcomes: reducing the time taken to prepare a quote, increasing production throughput, cutting service costs, reducing stock levels or bringing a product to market faster.
Technology comes into play only later, as a means of achieving this outcome.
This approach is also evident in the experiences of large organisations. EY, having rolled out Microsoft Copilot on a large scale within its own organisation, reported a 15 per cent increase in productivity among a group of 150,000 users, and redirected the time saved towards customer service and skills development. The company is currently rolling out the solution to over 400,000 employees. This is not an argument in favour of a specific product. What is more important is how the investment is measured: the technology has been linked to an operational outcome that can be observed before further scaling.
Three filters instead of a technology ranking
In practice, three questions prove useful when selecting autumn priorities.
The first concerns value: what financial or operational result will change if the project succeeds? The second concerns readiness: does the company have the data, architecture, skills and a process owner to achieve this result within a reasonable timeframe? The third measures the opportunity cost: what will happen if the project is postponed by a year?
This allows a project aimed at increasing sales to compete for capital with the modernisation of the core system or an investment in security, without artificially reducing all initiatives to a simple ROI calculation. For some projects, the value will lie in increased revenue. For others, it will be risk mitigation, cost avoidance or the creation of the infrastructure needed for future changes.
This last element has also taken on regulatory significance. From 2 August 2026, the transparency obligations set out in Article 50 of the EU AI Act will apply. These relate, amongst other things, to specific human interactions with AI and the labelling of certain content generated or modified by AI systems. In July, the European Commission published detailed guidelines for providers and organisations using such solutions.
A priority also means letting go
The three priorities do not necessarily correspond to the three largest IT projects. A portfolio combining an initiative to improve business performance, an investment to remove a significant technological constraint, and an action to mitigate a key risk may prove more useful.
The common denominator remains the ability to assess progress. Savings, process time, conversion rates, system availability, the number of incidents, infrastructure costs and time to market enable the board to engage with IT on the basis of results, rather than declarations.
With technology expenditure on the rise, access to new opportunities is becoming less of an issue. The real challenge—and the one that offers the greatest value—is selecting which of these will genuinely transform the company’s economics, resilience or capacity for growth.
