Nicus Software, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise IT Financial Management solutions, today announced new research revealing a significant gap in how large organizations manage the financial impact and value of AI investments. Only 4% of senior IT and technology budget leaders surveyed are highly satisfied with their ability to categorize and track AI usage, benefits, token consumption costs, and return on AI investment. Just 1% are highly satisfied with their ability to establish the taxonomy and cost-category structure needed to classify emerging spend.
Only 4% of senior IT budget leaders are highly satisfied with AI cost and ROI tracking
Just 1% are highly satisfied with ability to establish taxonomy for emerging spend
79% rank detecting and explaining financial variances among most valuable AI capabilities
68% report five or more unresolved high-priority decision needs
90% rate determining whether IT investments delivered promised outcomes as highly important
Only 13% are highly satisfied with current ability to do so
The findings are published in The ITFM Value Gap: Why established programs still struggle to support executive decisions—and what ITFM must deliver next. The report identifies what Nicus calls the ITFM Value Gap: the distance between the financial management capabilities an organization has established and the value those capabilities create at the point of decision. The research suggests that organizations can have established cost models, data, processes, and reporting while still struggling to provide the timely evidence executives need to decide what to fund, change, optimize, reallocate, or stop.
That disconnect extends well beyond AI. Sixty-eight percent of the 150 senior IT and technology budget leaders surveyed report five or more unresolved high-priority decision needs, even though 69% rate the maturity of their ITFM programs at 8 or higher on a 10-point scale. Among those who rate their maturity at 8 or higher, 55% still report five or more unresolved high-priority needs.
"AI is creating a financial management challenge before many organizations have established a shared language for addressing it," said Gavin Drake, Chief Marketing Officer at Nicus. "IT and finance leaders need to connect consumption and total cost to accountable owners, use cases, and expected outcomes so they can make informed decisions about where to scale, optimize, change, or stop investment. More broadly, our research suggests that ITFM maturity has to mean more than having the right data and processes in place. Its value is ultimately determined by whether leaders have the information they need to make better decisions while there is still time to influence the outcome."
The stakes are increasingly important as IT and AI investments compete for enterprise resources and executives demand clearer evidence of business value. Ninety percent of respondents rate determining whether IT investments delivered their promised outcomes as highly important, but only 13% are highly satisfied with their current ability to do so. Ninety-one percent rate identifying spending that can be reduced or deferred without disrupting business outcomes as highly important, while only 9% are highly satisfied with that capability.
The research also shows that senior IT budget leaders expect AI itself to play a role in improving those decisions. Asked to select up to three of the most valuable potential AI capabilities for IT financial decision-making, 79% selected detecting and explaining budget variances, 74% selected continuously identifying IT cost optimization opportunities, and 62% selected automatically updating forecasts as actual results become available.
Nicus commissioned a third-party research agency to survey 150 qualified senior IT and technology budget leaders in North America between June 11 and July 29, 2026. Respondents were full-time employees at organizations with at least $50 million in annual IT spend and were personally accountable for governing and defending an IT budget to senior leadership, the C-suite, or the board.
About Nicus
Nicus delivers clarity, control, and confidence in every technology investment, helping leaders maximize the value of technology spend across the enterprise. Our IT Financial Management and Modern Technology Business Management solutions are delivered on the Nicus Cloud or natively on the ServiceNow platform, enabling organizations to transform complexity into actionable insight. As organizations increase investment in AI and other emerging technologies, Nicus helps leaders understand, manage, and optimize the cost and business impact of these investments. Trusted by Fortune 2000 companies, Nicus empowers IT, finance, and business leaders to make smarter decisions, optimize spend, and drive better business outcomes.
