Only 12% of Indian enterprises have a fully consolidated, enterprise-wide view of their IT spending, with fragmented data emerging as the biggest obstacle to effective cost intelligence, according to a new report by Cognizant.
The report, “Smarter IT Spend: From Cost Control to Cost Intelligence,” highlights that while technology investments continue to rise across industries, most organizations struggle to gain complete visibility into IT expenditure, limiting their ability to convert technology investments into measurable business outcomes.
The findings are based on an independent survey conducted by Dun & Bradstreet in early 2026, covering 105 senior business and technology leaders, including C-suite executives, from organizations with annual revenues exceeding ₹3,000 crore across sectors such as banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, public sector enterprises, Global Capability Centres (GCCs) and IT.
Fragmented data hinders cost visibility
According to the report, technology spending is becoming increasingly distributed across multiple platforms, applications, vendors and business units, making it difficult for enterprises to effectively monitor, manage and optimise IT investments.
Nearly 63% of respondents identified fragmented data across systems and tools as the biggest barrier to achieving IT cost intelligence. This disconnect prevents organizations from creating a unified enterprise-wide view of IT expenditure, delaying decision-making and reducing their ability to redirect budgets as business priorities evolve.
The study also found significant differences across industries. Manufacturing companies have made notable progress in achieving consolidated IT cost visibility, while sectors such as BFSI and pharmaceuticals continue to operate with relatively high but fragmented visibility. Global Capability Centres were found to have the highest levels of consolidated IT cost visibility.
Cost management still evolving
The report found that 59% of organisations can allocate IT costs at a detailed service or product level, although many still depend on partial or high-level cost allocation methods. Only 49% have established an agile process to reallocate IT spending when business priorities change.
Rigid budgeting cycles remain the biggest hurdle to rapid budget reallocation, cited by 64% of respondents, followed by organisational resistance (51%) and the lack of real-time data (31%).
While 62% of enterprises have adopted centralised and automated cost management platforms, the report noted that many organizations are yet to fully convert cost insights into actionable business decisions.
Companies are pursuing cost optimisation through several initiatives, including cloud rightsizing, workload optimisation and application rationalisation. Cognizant estimates that organizations adopting AI-led cost governance models could reduce cost leakage by 15% to 25%.
AI-powered cost intelligence
The report recommends that enterprises move beyond periodic cost reviews and adopt continuous, AI-enabled cost intelligence. It advocates embedding human oversight into AI-driven governance, improving portfolio-level optimisation and expanding AI-enabled FinOps practices that can proactively identify inefficiencies and recommend corrective actions in near real time.
It also stresses the need for better data quality and closer collaboration between IT and finance teams through shared cost visibility and standardized frameworks to transform fragmented information into actionable business intelligence.
Cognizant Vice President & India Country Head, Achal Kataria, said enterprises are simultaneously scaling AI, cloud and digital transformation initiatives, making technology management increasingly complex.