What approaches have you used to advance strategic priorities despite budget constraints? Where have you found opportunities to reallocate budget, rationalize your technology portfolio, or demonstrate faster time-to-value?

For us, the most glaring opportunity has been application rationalization. We are just beginning the process of capturing our extensive portfolio, much of which has been hidden in shadow IT. By unearthing these applications, we can address scalability, take out unnecessary costs, leverage internal teams, and reclaim resources that have been positioned as risks to the business. As I request additional funding, I also demonstrate that we are good stewards of our existing spend by reclaiming costs and identifying opportunities for savings. This parallel approach helps establish credibility and shows that we are actively working to reduce spend on areas that are not driving value.

We are early in our enterprise architecture capability and have just adopted Lean IX to help with application rationalization. We are considering working with a strategic consulting partner to provide enterprise architecture as a service to help us get started. Our approach is both bottoms-up, capturing and rationalizing the portfolio, and top-down, looking strategically at what capabilities are needed to run the business. Over time, we plan to insource this capability as we build internal expertise.

AI is a significant area where we expect productivity gains. Our focus is not on reducing headcount, but rather on increasing output. For example, code assist tools, such as GitHub and Cursor help our engineering teams write code more efficiently. The productivity savings are not about reducing the number of engineers, but about delivering more product with the same team. Tool consolidation is another straightforward area, as removing redundant tools from our landscape clearly reduces costs. We ensure that every initiative is evaluated for actual return, and consolidation has been an easy win for demonstrating faster time-to-value.

I agree that it is a false dichotomy to separate innovation from operational efficiency when it comes to reallocating and prioritizing resources. Whenever we discuss operational efficiency, automation is always at the forefront, making processes repeatable and highly efficient through effective use of tooling and technology. When automation is done successfully over several years, we reach a point where certain roles are no longer needed, and we can reallocate those funds to strategically important positions, whether in AI or other initiatives. This requires a year-over-year commitment, always looking ahead to how the organization will evolve and what skill sets will be needed in the future. We have found ample opportunity for innovation, even with a shrinking budget. In fact, tight budgets often fuel innovation.