Smarter IT Planning: Strategies and Tools for Leaner Processes and Tighter Budgets
Authors of this issue: Lars Burmester, Tino Eichler, Michael Hanser and Patrick Wähning
Dear Readers,
as the annual planning processes have already begun, IT leaders and controllers alike find themselves in the thick of planning, managing uncertainty, aligning priorities, and reconciling flat budgets with growing demands.
In this edition of the Horváth Digital & IT Newsletter, we focus on what makes strategic IT planning not just more efficient, but more valuable. While many associate this period with stress, spreadsheets and late nights, we believe it’s also an opportunity: to rethink planning approaches, streamline processes, and create real business impact.
We’re sharing practical insights, proven methods, and tool-based solutions that can help you make your IT planning faster, leaner and smarter.
Enjoy the read and feel free to share your perspective.
Best regards, your Horváth Digital & IT Team
IT Planning: Annual Odyssey or Avoidable Drama?
Every year, IT managers face the same recurring challenges:
IT Service Managers are close to a breakdown due to missing demand figures and lack of cost transparency.
IT Project Managers are unsure whether their projects will continue, as the portfolio decisions are still pending.
IT Controllers search for missing master data, when in fact the right planning templates aren’t even used.
Business Managers get frustrated because roles remain unfilled in cost center planning, or if filled, costs seem to explode.
What may sound funny is, sadly, everyday reality. But why is this happening year after year?
How to Plan Smarter with Flat Budgets and Rising Demands
IT organizations must do more with less: budgets stagnate while expectations and tasks keep growing. Planning future costs becomes even harder than managing current ones.
But why?
Run costs can hardly be changed short-term. Cutting supplier contracts or reducing personnel costs takes years to show effect.
Change costs are crucial to transform IT and boost business value, yet often planned ad hoc, based on "first come, first served" or across-the-board cuts.
Recurring costs (which make up 70–80% of IT budgets) are still planned from scratch every year, wasting time and missing cost containment opportunities.
Planning tools are blamed as outdated or rigid, but often the real issue is the flawed planning approach itself.
To solve this, we recommend focusing on three areas:
IT-specific approach
Lean planning process
Modern, integrated tools
1. IT-specific Approach: Plan the Unknown, Not the Obvious
Use a mid-term plan to set top-down targets reflecting your IT strategy. At the same time, frontload known cost trends from long-term contracts (suppliers, employees).
This narrows the area of uncertainty – often down to just 15–20 % of total plan volume.
How IT Controlling can frontload:
Change: Add known project prolongations, programs, recurring change initiatives. Define “change envelopes” – fixed project capacities with capped costs for business units to fill.
Run: Prefill service costs based on past actuals. Use simple demand & cost models to forecast likely development.
This focuses planning on real unknowns, not on obvious, repetitive costs.
2. Lean Planning Process: Simplify and Focus
Keep the planning process straight and simple by avoiding unnecessary detail. For example, move from planning every single item (leaf level) to higher-level categories (node level).
Before the “hot phase” begins, IT Controlling should thoroughly prepare by:
setting clear targets,
pre-filling the obvious parts of the plan (which typically cover 80–85 % of costs),
and drafting proposals for the remaining uncertain areas.
Decentral teams then don’t have to plan everything from scratch. Instead, they focus on:
validating these proposals,
and, if needed, providing a well-founded counterproposal.
To support this streamlined process, a modern integrated planning tool helps automate data preparation, keep information consistent, and reduce manual effort. Throughout, IT Controlling also maintains a risk buffer to handle later deviations.
The result: faster planning cycles, less frustration, and more time to focus on real decisions.
3. Integrated Tools: Better and Faster IT Planning
To realize the full potential of IT planning, it must be embedded into the broader enterprise planning and business intelligence (BI) landscape, not treated as a siloed or standalone task. IT cost and investment decisions increasingly influence overall business performance, which makes it essential to align IT planning with financial, HR, and strategic planning processes.
This kind of alignment requires more than just synchronized timelines. It depends on a shared and consistent data structure across departments and systems. Key elements of this foundation include: cost centers, service definitions and cost elements.
With an integrated data model in place, ERP data (e.g. actual costs) and IT Service Management data (e.g. demand) can be efficiently combined to serve as meaningful input for IT planning. On top of this shared foundation, IT can apply its specific planning logic, for example, to account for the distinct characteristics of run and change costs.
What often gets overlooked is the strategic linkage: IT planning must reflect business priorities and anticipate known structural developments. Without this connection, planning becomes reactive instead of enabling proactive decision-making.
An integrated planning model helps close this gap. Whenever business units initiate new projects or initiatives, they almost always create corresponding IT demand in the form of capacity, systems, or support. These effects should become visible before financial targets are finalized. This is only possible if IT is involved early and planning is built on an integrated data architecture from the start.
Equally important is the clear allocation of planning responsibilities:
Business teams define their needs and initiatives,
IT translates these into technical deliverables and resource requirements,
Finance ensures governance, consistency, and alignment with company-wide financial goals.
IT planning doesn’t require a perfect tool, but it does require a planning setup that reflects real-world dependencies. Once those dependencies are made transparent, the discussion shifts:
from manual data reconciliation and validation,
to meaningful prioritization and forward-looking decision-making.
The result: faster, better-informed planning that supports both operational execution and strategic steering, with IT firmly anchored in the broader enterprise context.
From Theory to Practice – How Modern Tools Enable Smarter IT Planning
Even the most well-thought-out IT planning process can fall short if the right tools are missing. Many organizations still rely on fragmented Excel models or isolated, stand-alone IT planning systems. These approaches lack integration, slow down collaboration, and reduce transparency - making consistent, enterprise-wide planning difficult.
A more sustainable solution lies in modern, integrated planning platforms and standard tools. They combine familiar planning structures (like cost elements or cost objects) with the flexibility needed for IT-specific requirements, and they help embed IT planning into broader financial and operational processes.
State-of-the-art platforms like SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) enable decentralized input while maintaining a centralized planning logic. This allows organizations to manage run and change costs within one system, without switching between isolated models or duplicating effort.
When used effectively, these platforms:
reduce manual effort,
increase transparency and traceability,
and foster better coordination between IT, finance, and business units.
It’s important to note: the tool doesn’t replace planning logic, but it makes integrated planning scalable, structured, and easier to govern.
Planning logic in action
Modern planning begins with a top-down base case and translates this into actionable activities, both recurring and project-based. In the IT context, this means aligning high-level financial targets with granular project and cost center planning to ensure both strategic relevance and operational consistency.
Practical example: What this looks like in SAC
A modern tool like SAP Analytics Cloud supports the entire process with powerful built-in features:
Automated breakdowns of financial targets into IT-specific cost objects
Flexible distribution logic to adjust values based on new assumptions or negotiations
Real-time calculation of plan deltas, showing deviations instantly
Integrated commenting to support collaboration and transparency
For cost centers, the same logic applies:
Central pre-fills from the financial plan are distributed to IT-relevant cost structures
Adjustments remain possible without losing alignment or structure
The impact on cost centers is automatically reflected in the cost center planning view
Full integration into the group-wide financial planning process is ensured
Final thought
Integrated planning platforms like SAC offer both the structure and flexibility needed to anchor IT planning in the enterprise-wide context. They enable faster decisions, greater transparency, more control and ultimately turn IT planning from a fragmented task into a strategic capability.
💡That’s why we strongly recommend supporting your integrated planning approach with a standardized, unified tool to maximize both process efficiency and planning quality.
Upcoming Event Highlights
September 9th: CxO Priorities 2025 - Ergebnisse der aktuellen Horváth CxO-Studie, Vienna/ Austria (held in German)
September 23rd: BI-Transformation bei der AOK Baden-Württemberg: Herausforderungen und Lösungen für eine datengeleitete Zukunft, Online Event (held in German)
October 9th: SAC Planning Hands-On-Workshop, Düsseldorf/ Germany (held in German)
October 13th-15th: Handelsblatt Summit Zukunft IT 2025, Munich (held in German)
October 27th-28th: Advanced Power BI Hands-On Workshop, Düsseldorf/ Germany (held in German)
October 29th: Intelligenter Einkauf 4.0: Wie Generative KI die Beschaffung optimiert, Zurich/ Switzerland (held in German)
What's next on Issue #09?
Next up, we will give you insights on Software Steering and Cybersecurity. Our next newsletter will be published on September 3, 2025.
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