Start the FY strong: Future-proof your IT strategy
For those following a July to June budget, the next financial year looms closer. Now is the time to set clear priorities for the year ahead. It’s as close to a clean slate as management and leadership can get; an opportunity to shift your focus from a doing state to one that leans into reflection, logical reasoning, and intentional planning. This is the time to take a breath from the firefighting, get under the hood of your organisation’s big-picture FY goals, and decide the shape your IT strategy needs to take to support these objectives. And, for those not operating on the typical July–June financial year, starting Q3 strong works for every IT strategy.
When it comes to setting IT priorities for ‘25–’26, an IT strategy that supports business strategy is the north star. This is not a revolutionary idea, but one to keep in the absolute centre of your planning. Scrolling through industry news and reports on annual CIO priorities, it’s easy to fall into the trap of questioning whether the industry’s hot topics deserve a place on your list: transformational AI, application modernisation, edge computing, and so on.¹
It may be the case that these trending topics do play an important role in your organisation and department’s strategy, however, it’s important to distinguish the difference between the pursuits that come from a clear business need versus cultural pressure to keep up with the industry’s Joneses.
Truly impactful IT strategies take their lead from what’s happening at home. They’re shaped by the nuances of the individual business: the sector, size, working model, state of play, and goals. As the right-hand of many IT teams across the country, our team knows this all too well.
As we gear up for the new financial year, our customer service and solution architect teams are speaking daily with IT managers and department seniors about priorities and strategies for the year ahead. While every individual, organisation, and conversation is different, there are four areas that have surfaced more often than the rest.
Four focus areas for FY 2025–26
We’re sharing these priority items not to add to the influx of noise around what your IT priorities should be, but to bring the viewpoints on what matters most to IT heads a little closer to home. Unlike insights drawn from international tech-first powerhouses, these priority items reflect the real goals of organisations we work with.
Treat these high-impact areas as lenses through which to review your own landscape, not a one-size-fits-all checklist.
1. Infrastructure modernisation
Growth is at the heart of many FY 2025–26 plans, yet plenty of organisations tell us their core infrastructure is already straining. Whether they are adding new retail sites, onboarding more staff, or scaling services, the same worry comes up: “Can our infrastructure keep up?”. Upgrading legacy infrastructure first gives every other strategic priority a fighting chance.
Solid infrastructure underpins everything from fast point-of-sale transactions to sharing data between systems. It’s the foundation of workplace efficiency.
Signs that your infrastructure may need attention:
- Servers or storage past vendor support
- Maintenance costs rising faster than planned
- Staff or customers citing speed or downtime issues.
- Business objectives that assume higher capacity or reliability
2. Targeted digital transformation and introducing AI
Very few businesses want a big bang overhaul. In fact, for most of our clients, ‘targeted’ is the key word in ‘targeted digital transformation”. As it sounds, more organisations are taking the approach of focusing on removing one bottleneck at a time. Whether that means automating paper-driven approvals processes, implementing operational efficiencies using AI, or tapping into real-time insights from the frontline, the goal is always to deliver a better experience, faster turnaround, and free up human resources to focus on bigger ticket projects.
Signs that targeted digital transformation should be considered:
- Manual workflows slowing down operations
- Duplicate data entry
- Corporate KPIs focused on efficiency and experience
3. Cyber resilience
Boards, regulators, and insurers are all turning up the heat on cyber security. A stronger baseline is a prerequisite for trading, tendering, and sometimes, even renewing insurance. Getting the fundamentals locked down early in the financial year protects revenue, reputation, and the hard-won budget for everything else. If sourcing a cyber security framework is a subitem on this list, our guide to finding the right fit security framework is a useful primer.
A focused push on cyber security, whether that be through integrating a new security framework, bolstering your strategy with SOaaS or DRaaS, or increasing the cadence of your organisation-wide cybersecurity training, all of these actions creates visible progress and reassures stakeholders.
Signs that your cyber resilience strategy may need attention:
- Absence of security procedures that align with a formalised framework
- Single-factor passwords still common
- Incident response plans are untested
- Recovery time test results falling short
- Risk reduction named as an FY priority
4. Smarter budgeting with managed services
Many IT leaders are seeing a disconnect between what their organisation is setting out to achieve and their willingness to expand headcount to make this happen. IT teams are feeling the pressure to do more with less, which is why many are turning to managed services to handle the routine tasks such as environment monitoring, backups, and first-line support. Managed services help organisations hit productivity and efficiency targets by handling the BAU and freeing up internal specialists to focus on higher-value projects.
Signs that managed services may help you unlock more capacity:
- Project deadlines slipping because operational fires keep pulling staff away
- Duplicate spend on overlapping monitoring or ticketing tools
- Strategic plans calling for innovation without increasing internal resources
Sources
1 pwc, 2025.
