Large US and UK firms report spending 28% of software budgets on upgrades they wouldn’t have chosen.

Once the software is installed, 78% agree their main supplier decides when and how it changes. Refusing can mean losing support on core systems, so 95% have paid for an upgrade they expected to worsen results.

Their latest vendor-driven change cost $12.87M a year on average.
When their last AI or data project was slowed, paused or cancelled, 34% called vendor-driven costs a major factor and 56% a moderate one.