Cognizant, a leading AI builder and technology services provider, unveiled a new report focused on India titled “Smarter IT spend: From cost control to cost intelligence.” The report reveals that while technology investments are rising across industries, most enterprises lack an enterprise-wide unified view of IT spend, limiting their ability to translate technology investments into measurable business outcomes.
Technology spends are becoming increasingly distributed across platforms, tools and business units making it harder for enterprises to track, manage, and optimize IT spend effectively, noted the report based on a survey of 105 senior business and technology leaders across India.
Disconnected data across systems, tools, and vendors prevents organizations from building a consolidated, enterprise-wide view of IT spend, slowing decision-making and limiting the ability to reallocate budgets as priorities evolve.
The research reveals significant disparities in IT spending visibility across industries and categories. While the manufacturing sector has demonstrated marked progress toward consolidated, unified IT cost visibility, key sectors such as Banking, Financial Services & Insurance (BFSI) and Pharma fall short of full consolidation, operating with high but fragmented visibility. The report notes that Global Capability Centres (GCCs) have consistently provided higher levels of consolidated IT cost visibility.
Key findings from the report are:
- Only 12% of organizations have a fully consolidated, enterprise-wide view of IT spend
- 63% cite fragmented data across systems and tools as the biggest barrier to cost intelligence
- 59% can allocate IT costs at a detailed service or product level, while most still rely on partial or high-level allocation
- Only 49% have a formal, agile process to reallocate IT spend when priorities change
- The top barriers to rapid reallocation include rigid budgeting cycles (64%), organizational resistance (51%), and lack of real-time data (31%)
- 62% use centralized, automated cost management platforms, though maturity in translating insights into action remains limited
- Cost optimization is being pursued through multiple levers, including cloud rightsizing (70%), workload optimization (62%), and application rationalization (60%)
- Organizations adopting AI-led cost governance models could reduce cost leakage by 15%–25%
The report outlines how enterprises can transition from periodic cost reviews to continuous, AI-enabled cost intelligence. It recommends embedding human-in-the-loop governance, strengthening portfolio-level optimization and evolving toward AI-augmented FinOps models that can proactively identify cost inefficiencies and recommend corrective actions in real time.
It also highlights the importance of improving data hygiene and enabling better collaboration between IT and finance through shared cost visibility and standardized frameworks, allowing organizations to turn fragmented data into decision-ready intelligence.
Mr. Achal Kataria, Vice President & India Country Head, Cognizant said, “Enterprises today are managing unprecedented complexity as they scale AI, cloud, and digital initiatives simultaneously. This research highlights a critical gap: while technology investments are accelerating, cost visibility remains fragmented, limiting the ability to turn spend into business value. Addressing this requires a shift from traditional cost management to AI-powered, always-on cost intelligence, where insights are continuous and designed to be actionable. This is where AI Builders like Cognizant play a critical role, bringing together data, platforms and domain expertise aiming to enable more informed, near real-time decision-making, in collaboration with our clients. At Cognizant, we are partnering with enterprises to build AI-enabled cost management and FinOps capabilities, helping them unify data, optimize spend and unlock greater agility and value from their technology investments.”
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