CX Leaders Grow More Cautious as Economic Uncertainty Persists

Ongoing economic volatility is tempering 2026 budget optimism, with tariffs, trade wars, cyber threats, and economic uncertainty resetting CRM budget expectations, signaling a shift toward more cautious growth planning, Forrester Research notred in a new report.

Amid persistent volatility, leaders must turn to scenario planning and prepare for both deeper budget cuts and unexpected investment opportunities, protecting and prioritizing investments that create customer value, stopping spending on inefficient complexity, and embracing constant, low-cost experimentation to stay ahead, the firm recommends.

While it's no surprise that leaders are less bullish compared to last year, it's not all doom and gloom, Forrester found. Despite the uncertainty, 86 percent of tech leaders across industries are expecting increased budgets from the year before. Additionally, tech leaders in the financial services and healthcare sectors expect double-digit budget increases, driven by investments in generative artificial intelligence, analytics, and threat intelligence.

Forrester's budget recommendations include the following:

Areas to increase investment in 2026

• Data literacy and employee AI readiness programs. Data and AI leaders must invest in ongoing, persona-based data and AI literacy programs, training all employees on the responsible use of AI as well as how to interpret data and AI-driven insights.
• Customer insights and data management. Leaders with a clearer grasp of their customers in uncertain times will be able to better engage proactively and should consider developing a rigorous data collection strategy.

Areas to decrease investment in 2026

• Cloud-first strategy approach. New sovereignty and resilience regulations, increasing geopolitical tension, executive pressure to reduce costs, and the growing number of production-ready genAI use cases have switched the public cloud conversation from cloud-first to cloud-as-necessary.
• Legacy tech infrastructure. It's time for a more radical approach to eliminate tech debt. Declare tech debt bankruptcy and outsource the legacy tech stack to ensure operational reliability while freeing up funds to build a modern, adaptive, and AI-powered ecosystem that drives innovation.

Areas for experimentation in 2026

• Agentic AI for task automation, first within a single app and then across business apps. Explore the disruptive potential of agentic AI by experimenting with autonomous AI agents that can perform tasks and make decisions independently. Start by prioritizing read-only/analytical apps to avoid the risk of breaking data entry or data quality rules.
• Industry-specific edge intelligence. Companies can collect relevant input from mobile, internet-of-things, and other edge devices to provide customers with timely, use-case-driven insights. Wide deployment of edge intelligence solutions is expected over the next two to four years as developments occur in chipset functions, form factors, 5G networks, and powerful on-device and on-chip machine learning models.

"While conservative budget expectations are a fine starting point for 2026, now is not the time to get complacent," said Sharyn Leaver, chief research officer at Forrester. "With no end in sight to today's volatility, leaders should be prepared for both more aggressive cuts and unexpected investment opportunities. They can achieve this through constant, low-cost experimentation and gain the edge to outmaneuver competitors the moment the opportunity strikes."