CRM Budget Increases Expected in 2027 

More than 80 percent of business leaders expect their budgets to increase in the coming year, with as many as one-quarter anticipating growth of 10 percent or more, Forrester Research notes in a new report.

This year, optimism is widespread across functions, as 82 percent of technology decision makers and 91 percent of marketers expect budget increases in 2027, while 55 percent of customer experience (CX) leaders anticipate spending growth of 5 percent or more, up from 39 percent a year ago, the research firm says.

Overall, Forrester found that leaders are approaching 2027 with renewed confidence as they increasingly accept volatility as a permanent feature of the business environment.

But planning in the age of AI demands more than bigger budgets, the firm says, noting that increasing investment without modernizing operating models, strengthening data foundations, and improving AI readiness will only accelerate fragmented data, duplicated work, and technical debt.

To realize AI's full potential, leaders must rethink their strategies and prioritize investments in operational foundations, governance, and experimentation that drive tangible outcomes, Forrester says.

Forrester's 2027 Budget Planning Guides includes a number of key recommendations enumerated below.

Areas to increase budget in 2027:

• Enterprise context for agents.?Build machine-readable information and provide governed enterprise knowledge that enables AI agents to contextualize and navigate business policies, processes, and systems with greater accuracy.
• Brand visibility in answer engines.?As AI-powered answer engines increasingly influence buyer decisions, marketers must prioritize answer engine optimization (AEO) to improve brand visibility and share of voice in AI-generated results.

Areas to decrease budget in 2027:

• Tech debt that slows AI and productivity.?Instead of cutting spending across all data cleanup efforts, focus on targeted fixes that improve data quality, data accessibility, and developer or agent productivity.
• AI pilots that scale activity without organizational readiness.?Eliminate AI initiatives that lack governance, clear ownership, success criteria, or a defined path to scale.

Areas for experimentation in 2027:

• Synthetic data to accelerate insights generation.?Test synthetic data alongside traditional customer research to accelerate learning, improve concept testing, and establish clear guardrails for where synthetic insights can be used reliably and responsibly.
• AI agents that enable marketing operations and customer-facing experiences.?Experiment with agentic capabilities that improve content production, audience generation, brand governance, and customer engagement.

"Business leaders are no longer planning for a return to stability. They're planning for a future where volatility is a constant," says Sharyn Leaver, chief research officer at Forrester. "The organizations that outperform in 2027 won't be those that spend the most on AI. They'll be the ones that invest in the foundations that make AI effective: trusted data, strong governance, organizational readiness, and the ability to continuously adapt as technology and customer behavior evolve."