Summary
- In a volatile technology market, organizations are looking for ways to increase cost stability while reducing risk and overall spend.
- Cost predictability isn’t just about reducing costs. It requires proactive data-driven decision-making that prioritizes technology lifecycle planning, strategic procurement timing, strategic consumption models, and OEM-agnostic approaches to management.
- Organizations that use lifecycle services to optimize, manage, and control their technology investments have the advantage of reliable costs, reduced TCO, and the ability to invest those savings into becoming more competitive in the marketplace.
The growing challenge of technology cost volatility
Organizations today are navigating a difficult balance between driving innovation and managing increasing financial uncertainty. As AI-driven infrastructure demand, OEM repricing, and supply chain constraints continue to reshape the technology landscape, cost predictability has become a growing priority for enterprise leaders.
To explore how organizations can better navigate these challenges, I asked GDT Chief Financial Officer Fachtna Keohane and Chief Revenue Officer Dan Mosley to weigh in on budgeting strategy, lifecycle planning, procurement, and the evolving role of technology partnerships in today’s market.
Read on for executive-level insights on budgeting and risk in a changing financial landscape and strategic advice for adjusting your organization’s technology purchasing and budget cycles to achieve business transformation with cost predictability.
1. How to think about budgeting and risk
Q: How has the confluence of AI‑driven infrastructure demand, chip supply constraints, and OEM repricing changed the way organizations should think about budgeting and risk for large infrastructure and networking programs over the next three to five years?
Fachtna: First, these factors have fundamentally shifted budgeting from a static annual exercise to a continuous risk-managed process with monthly or weekly forecasting.
Decision-makers must treat infrastructure less like discrete projects and more like a portfolio of financial risks, managing timing, pricing, supply, and vendor exposure in real time. The biggest change is recognizing that when you buy is now as important as what you buy.
This leads to the second major shift, which is that we’re placing greater emphasis on timing risk. In the past, delaying a deployment might have had minimal financial impact. Today, deferral can mean materially higher costs due to repricing or allocation constraints. So timing decisions are now financial decisions.
Over a three-to-five-year horizon, the companies that will outperform are those that embed procurement strategy, lifecycle visibility, and financial planning into a single discipline, rather than managing them separately.
2. Key levers for achieving cost predictability
Q: How do you define “cost predictability” in financial terms, and what are the top levers that move that metric for organizations re-strategizing their approach?
Fachtna: From my perspective, cost predictability is the reduction of variance between expected and actual total cost of ownership over time, not just initial purchase price but across the full lifecycle.
We typically look at it through three lenses:
- Budget variance (plan vs. actual)
- Cost volatility (frequency and magnitude of changes)
- Forward visibility (how far out costs are reliably known)
We’re seeing organizations use three major levers to drive cost predictability right now:
1. Proactive lifecycle planning
Taking advantage of opportunities like lifecycle assessments offered by third parties allows customers to anticipate refresh cycles, support transitions, and end-of-life risks early. This helps them reduce unplanned spend and emergency purchases at peak pricing.
2. Strategic procurement timing and structure
Earlier procurement, combined with structured agreements like enterprise agreements or price holds, helps mitigate exposure to OEM repricing and supply shocks.
3. Commercial flexibility (financing and consumption models)
Flexible financing and consumption-based structures smooth cash flow and reduce the impact of timing mismatches between need and budget availability.
The common thread is simple: Predictability improves when decisions are made earlier, with better data, and with more structural flexibility built in.
Q: How are organizations rethinking their relationships with OEMs and technology partners as they look for more flexibility and predictability?
Dan: The first thing I think about when it comes to re-strategizing for cost predictability is the shift to an OEM-agnostic approach. What we’re seeing more and more is that organizations are finding it increasingly helpful to look beyond their OEM vendor estate for reviewing and strategizing across timing, pricing, priorities, etc.
While it has historically been pretty common for enterprises to lean on vendor support to manage contracts, my experience is showing that leveraging a third party to navigate all of that has its benefits in terms of ensuring you’ve got a strategic partner to help you make informed and unbiased decisions across all your OEMs and really be able to have a clear view of all the options available.
3. What CIOs and CFOs can do differently
Q: For CIOs, CFOs, and procurement leaders planning infrastructure and software investment, what would you recommend they do differently in the next budgeting cycle to improve cost predictability and resilience?
Fachtna: If I could recommend changing two common behaviors, it would be these:
1. Plan earlier. Stop treating infrastructure as a reactive spend category. Too many organizations still plan infrastructure around immediate need rather than forward visibility. The result is buying late, when pricing, availability, and negotiating leverage are all worse.
The shift should be toward rolling 18-to-36-month infrastructure roadmaps, continuously updated with lifecycle and market data.
2. Align IT, finance, and procurement. We often see IT roadmaps, procurement cycles, and financial budgets operating on different timelines. That misalignment is one of the biggest drivers of cost unpredictability.
Organizations that align these functions using shared data and integrated planning see fewer surprises, better pricing outcomes, and stronger negotiating positions.
Ultimately, improving predictability isn’t about better forecasting alone but fundamentally changing when and how decisions get made.
4. How lifecycle services make a difference
Q: Can decision-makers expect to see lifecycle services make a measurable difference in price volatility, and, if so, how does that impact long-term technology costs and risk?
Fachtna: Yes, moving from event-driven decisions to lifecycle-driven decisions is yielding major gains for the organizations that choose to make the shift.
For example, consider a large enterprise experiencing repeated budget overruns tied to unplanned hardware refreshes and support renewals. Leadership might opt for a lifecycle assessment to start re-strategizing their approach to cost predictability. The insights provided in that assessment let them map their entire installed base against OEM lifecycle milestones and pricing trends. That data then enables the organization to take three actions with decisive positive impact.
The first would be to advance procurement on at-risk assets before OEM price increases to create a meaningful reduction in unplanned spend.
They could also consolidate renewals into a structured agreement to improve budget accuracy year-over-year.
And lastly, they would now be able to align refresh cycles with budget windows, resulting in fewer operational disruptions tied to end-of-life events.
The key takeaway is that lifecycle services definitely drive savings, but they also go beyond that to reduce uncertainty, which in many cases is even more valuable from a financial perspective.
Q: What types of customer outcomes are you seeing organizations achieve when they take a more lifecycle-driven approach to infrastructure planning?
Dan: I can definitely think of a few really good examples where a lifecycle-based approach made a huge difference. We actually helped a financial services provider with more than 50 a la carte software contracts undertake a major consolidation that resulted in five and a half million dollars in savings.
They had been buying through a lot of different contracts and models, which created complexity on the administrative side and made it harder to fully leverage what they already had in place. By working with our team to consolidate contracts and evaluate all of their support options, they were able to quickly realize meaningful savings. That also gave them more flexibility to reinvest those dollars into other strategic areas of the business.
How GDT is adjusting
Q: How is GDT’s own financial planning adjusting around working capital, inventory strategy, and pricing commitments to ensure we can keep our commitments to organizations that choose to partner with us?
Fachtna: GDT leadership has made adjustments across three areas to ensure we can continue delivering for customers despite volatility:
- More deliberate working capital management to support customer commitments without excess risk
- Targeted inventory and allocation strategies in constrained categories
- Stronger pricing governance to balance predictability for customers with market volatility
Our goal is always to protect customer outcomes while maintaining financial discipline.
Q: How has the role of a trusted technology partner changed as organizations navigate pricing volatility and faster refresh cycles?
Dan: In addition to the ways we’re adjusting on behalf of our customers, I want to also be sure to emphasize that, as a partner and advocate for our customers, our team is committed to proactive, transparent communication. Our goal is always to help decision-makers make informed choices and keep disruption to a minimum. These are not conversations we’re shying away from, and I encourage the organizations we work with to connect with their account team and even reach out to me directly. GDT remains committed to helping as many enterprises as we can to move forward with confidence, no matter how the market evolves.
Key takeaways for enterprise leaders
The bottom line for organizations trying to manage growth and transformation with risk and cost management is to make smart, informed decisions across the entire technology lifecycle. As Fachtna and Dan noted, cost predictability is about so much more than reducing spend.
Keeping these proactive planning strategies in mind as the market conditions continue to evolve will ensure your organization is better positioned to manage risk, improve flexibility, and support long-term growth.
