What Should CEOs Ask Before Approving IT Budgets?

In 2025, IT budgets aren’t just about servers and software—they’re strategic investments that shape the future of your business. As a CEO, signing off on tech spending without clarity is like flying blind. Every line item in an IT budget has the potential to either accelerate growth—or stall progress. According to a Gartner CFO-CIO survey, 84% of CIOs say their biggest challenge is justifying technology investments in business terms. The lesson? CEOs must be active participants, not passive approvers. In this article, we uncover the must-ask questions for CEOs before approving IT budgets—with insights from Wipro’s governance model and Complere Infosystem’s transformation playbook.

Why Smart Budgeting Starts at the Top

Before allocating millions to cloud infrastructure, AI pilots, or cybersecurity upgrades, CEOs must ensure:

Budget aligns with business strategy
ROI is measurable and monitored
Risks are anticipated and mitigated

At Wipro, IT spending is governed through a Business-Value Office, which cross-validates each budget item against expected outcomes. This led to a 17% increase in project ROI across core digital initiatives.

Wipro’s Budget Approval Blueprint

Wipro CEO Thierry Delaporte implemented a framework that connects budget to business value:

This system helped Wipro cut IT waste by 21% and boost initiative success rates by 29% in under two years.

The Complere Perspective- Engineering ROI from Day One

At Complere Infosystem, the CEO doesn’t just approve the IT budget—she helps co-architect it. Isha Taneja leads from a place of outcomes, asking critical questions before greenlighting spend:

What business goal does this solve?
What is the shortest path to measurable ROI?
Is this buy vs. build decision aligned with our architecture?

Case Example: A fintech client planned to spend $600K on third-party analytics tools. Complere intervened with a custom accelerator using Databricks and Snowflake. The result?

58% budget saving
Deployment in 40% less time
Customization aligned with future scale

5 Essential Questions Every CEO Must Ask

Before and After Strategic Review

Metric	Before Review	After Complere/Wipro Framework
Budget Utilization	62%	91%
Time-to-Value	180 days	95 days
Business Alignment Score	58%	88%

“Every IT dollar must echo a business value. CEOs don’t need to read code, but they must read the impact.” — Isha Taneja, CEO, Complere Infosystem

Final Verdict:

The days of rubber-stamping tech budgets are over. CEOs who ask the right questions before approving IT spend ensure alignment, accountability, and agility. With proven frameworks from Wipro and actionable foresight from Complere Infosystem, today’s CEOs can turn tech investments into tangible outcomes.

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Editor Bio

I’m Isha Taneja, serving as the Editor-in-Chief at "The Executive Outlook." Here, I interview industry leaders to share their personal opinions and provide valuable insights to the industry. Additionally, I am the CEO of Complere Infosystem, where I work with data to help businesses make smart decisions. Based in India, I leverage the latest technology to transform complex data into simple and actionable insights, ensuring companies utilize their data effectively.
In my free time, I enjoy writing blog posts to share my knowledge, aiming to make complex topics easy to understand for everyone.