Benchmark your IT spend against sector averages. Free UK tool covering infrastructure, security and applications. Find out if you are over or under-investing.
There is no single good number, and anyone who gives you one without asking your sector is guessing. Sector is the dominant driver. Financial services and software companies typically spend far more of their revenue on technology than manufacturers or builders. Across all sectors the reported average rose from about 3.6% in 2018 to about 5.5% in 2022 (Deloitte 2023 GTLS), and Deloitte's 2026 GTLS now puts the average at approximately 6% of revenue, with a projected trajectory toward 8%. But the spread by sector is what matters most. This tool shows you your sector's published range rather than a universal figure.
Not a spreadsheet, no. This tool does something a blank template cannot: it takes your actual revenue and IT spend, works out your share, and tells you how that compares to your sector. It also gives you a structured way to split your budget across running, growing and transforming the business, which is the breakdown a board wants. You can copy that structure into your own template. If you want a full IT budget built or reviewed, that is advisory work we can help with.
From named third-party research, principally Deloitte's Global Technology Leadership Study and Flexera's State of Tech Spend Report, plus widely published industry benchmarks. The sector bands are drawn from the Deloitte 2018 and Flexera 2020 studies; Deloitte's 2026 Global Technology Leadership Study updates the cross-sector average (now approximately 6% of revenue, trending toward 8%) but does not publish sector-level breakdowns. We present ranges with sources named in the methodology note. We deliberately do not invent a single number, because the honest answer is a band.
Everything you spend on technology in a year: IT and security staff, software and SaaS licences, cloud and hosting, hardware and devices, networks, telecoms, support contracts and IT services. The hardest part is technology bought outside the IT department, such as marketing tools, finance systems and departmental SaaS. Include it if you can, because leaving it out makes your number look artificially low and hides real cost from the board.
It is a simple way to show where technology money goes. Run is keeping current systems and operations live. Grow is enhancing and extending what you already have. Transform is genuinely new capability or new business models. Deloitte's research found the average organisation spent most of its technology budget, about 59%, on day-to-day operations and around 15% on business innovation (Deloitte CIO Insider, 2020). If almost all of your spend is run, you are paying to stand still.
No. A high share of revenue can mean genuine investment, or it can mean duplication, unmanaged cloud and software sprawl, and projects that never closed. A low share can mean admirable discipline, or it can mean deferred upgrades and quiet risk. The percentage is a starting question, not a verdict. What the money buys matters far more than how big it is.
Yes. Use total annual income or expenditure in place of revenue. Be aware there is no single authoritative figure for non-profit IT spend, so judge by your size and how much you rely on digital services to deliver your mission. A small grant-funded charity and a large national one will sit in very different places, and both can be right.
It is a guide, not an audit. Different studies define IT spend differently, organisations categorise costs differently, and ranges shift year to year. Treat a gap of a percentage point or two as noise. Treat being well outside your sector's range, in either direction, as a prompt to look harder. The tool is honest about this on every result.
Your IT spend as a share of revenue, where that sits against your sector's published range, an indicative pound range for your sector at your revenue, a run, grow and transform view of your budget, a plain-language read on what your position suggests, and a clear next question to take to your board or finance team. You can also receive a board-shareable summary.
No. Starkhorn is an independent technology consultancy. We do not resell software, cloud or hardware, and we take no commission on what you spend. That independence is the point: we help boards and finance leaders work out whether their technology spend is right and where it could work harder. This benchmark is free and exists to show you where you stand.
Hugely. In Deloitte's CIO survey, banking and securities spent nearly 8% of revenue on IT while construction and manufacturing spent under 2%. Flexera found software companies at about 24.7% against industrial products at about 4.1%. That is why this tool asks your sector before it shows you a range.