Which IT projects should you bring forward before EOFY?

Every year, organisations face the same EOFY challenge: how to make the best use of remaining budget before 30 June.

For IT leaders, the decision is becoming more complex. Security expectations continue to rise, AI initiatives are creating new demands around data governance and information management, and many organisations are under pressure to extract greater value from existing technology investments rather than simply buying more technology. 

As a result, the most effective EOFY IT budget decisions are rarely about finding something new to spend money on. More often, they're about accelerating work that already has a clear business case and a strong reason to start sooner rather than later.

The challenge is identifying which projects are ready to move and which ones need more definition first.

How do you know if a project is worth bringing forward before EOFY?

A project is usually worth bringing forward before EOFY when it's already planned, has a defined outcome, incurs costs if delayed, and has clear resource requirements.

Before committing budget, work through the following four questions.

1. Was this already planned for FY27?

If yes, continue. If not, be cautious. EOFY is rarely the right moment to introduce a completely new direction under time pressure.

2. Can you clearly describe the outcome?

If you can articulate what success looks like, even broadly, you're in good shape. If not, spend time defining the scope before committing budget.

3. Is there a cost to delaying?

Consider compliance risk, security exposure, rising cloud costs, operational inefficiencies, or productivity impacts. If delaying the work has meaningful consequences, bringing it forward may make sense.

4. Do you know what skills are required?

If you can describe the type of resource required and roughly how long the engagement should run, the work is likely suitable for prepaid professional services.

This is also where prepaid professional services tend to work best. When the outcome is understood, and the required expertise is relatively clear, organisations can use EOFY budget to secure delivery capacity now and schedule the work when it makes the most sense during FY27. Rather than waiting for budgets, approvals, and resource availability to align again in the new financial year, they can enter FY27 with the right expertise already secured.

If you can answer yes to three or four of these questions, the project is probably ready to bring forward. If not, it's worth refining the scope and requirements before committing budget.

 The best EOFY projects aren't new projects. They're projects with a clear outcome and a compelling reason to start earlier. 

What effective EOFY IT decisions look like

The strongest EOFY investments share a common characteristic: they create value sooner rather than later.

Whether the goal is reducing security risk, improving productivity, optimising cloud spend, or preparing for AI adoption, the benefit comes from starting work earlier rather than pushing it into another planning cycle.

Why these projects are rising to the top

EOFY priorities are changing. A few years ago, organisations were largely focused on infrastructure refreshes, cloud migrations, and major technology replacement programs. Today, many technology leaders are concentrating on optimisation, resilience, governance, and productivity.

Three trends are driving that shift:

• • Security and compliance expectations continue to increase.

  • AI adoption is creating demand for stronger data governance, information management, and technology foundations.

  • Technology leaders are under increasing pressure to demonstrate tangible returns from existing technology investments.

As a result, many EOFY decisions are no longer centred on purchasing new technology. They're focused on improving the value, performance, and outcomes delivered by technology that's already in place.

Which IT projects are worth bringing forward before EOFY?

While every organisation's priorities are different, these are the areas we most commonly see at The Missing Link being accelerated before EOFY.

Security and compliance gaps

Security investment is shifting from reactive remediation to proactive resilience.

According to the Australian Signals Directorate’s Annual Cyber Threat Report 2024–25, ASD’s ACSC received more than 84,700 cybercrime reports during the year and responded to more than 1,200 cyber security incidents. 

At the same time, organisations face growing pressure from cyber insurance requirements, regulatory obligations, customer expectations, and frameworks such as the ASD Essential Eight. Security programs that were once considered optional are increasingly becoming operational priorities.

This challenge is widespread. In 2025, only 22% of Commonwealth entities achieved Essential Eight Maturity Level 2 across all eight mitigation strategies, highlighting how difficult many organisations still find security uplift initiatives.

Known deficiencies in your security posture don't become less urgent in July. Whether it's identity controls, endpoint protection, privileged access management, or Essential Eight alignment, the risk exists today.

Addressing those gaps before EOFY can reduce risk exposure and create a stronger foundation for future initiatives.

AI readiness and Microsoft 365 optimisation

AI adoption is accelerating, but many organisations are discovering that successful AI initiatives depend far more on data governance, permissions, information architecture, and user readiness than on the technology itself.

For organisations using Microsoft 365, that often means addressing issues that have existed for years. Permissions sprawl, poorly structured SharePoint environments, inconsistent data management practices, and low platform adoption can all limit the value delivered by tools such as Microsoft Copilot.

Many organisations have already invested heavily in Microsoft 365 but are still working to unlock the full value of that investment. AI initiatives often underperform because the governance, security, information management, and user readiness work needed to support them wasn't completed first.

If your organisation is planning broader AI adoption in FY27, activities such as data governance reviews, permissions remediation, SharePoint optimisation, security controls reviews, and user enablement are often strong candidates for EOFY investment. They're generally well-scoped, low-risk, and directly support future AI outcomes.

Cloud cost reviews and optimisation

After years of cloud-first investment, many organisations are entering a cloud optimisation phase.

The focus is shifting from migration to cost control, workload efficiency, and architecture rationalisation.

Cloud environments naturally accumulate waste over time. Unused licences, overprovisioned resources, duplicate services, and legacy workloads can remain long after their original purpose has disappeared.

A structured review often pays for itself quickly. In many cases, the savings identified can help fund other FY27 initiatives.

For organisations already concerned about cloud spend, EOFY can be an ideal time to establish a clearer baseline and identify opportunities for improvement before the new financial year begins.

Automation scoping and workflow improvements

The conversation around AI is maturing. Organisations are moving beyond experimentation and asking more practical questions about governance, measurable outcomes, business value, and return on investment.

The organisations seeing the strongest results from AI and automation are rarely the ones that moved first. They're the ones that identified the right use cases, established the right operating model, and deployed solutions with clear business objectives.

If your team has already identified processes that could benefit from automation, EOFY can be a useful opportunity to scope the work, validate use cases, and prepare for execution in FY27.

Which projects shouldn't be brought forward?

Knowing what to accelerate is only half the equation. It's equally important to recognise which projects aren't ready yet.

Projects without a defined scope generally aren't suitable. If you can't describe what success looks like, moving the project forward won't reduce risk. It will simply move uncertainty earlier in the timeline.

Projects that depend on unresolved internal decisions also create unnecessary delivery risk. If leadership alignment, procurement approval, vendor selection, or technology direction remains undecided, accelerating the timeline often creates friction rather than removing it.

Projects that were never part of the broader strategic plan deserve particular scrutiny. EOFY should help organisations execute priorities more effectively, not introduce entirely new ones.

Making the internal case before 30 June

For many organisations, deciding what to bring forward is easier than securing approval before the deadline.

The most effective business cases are usually the simplest ones.

You're not proposing a new initiative. You're proposing an earlier start date for work that has already been prioritised.

Understanding that distinction is important. New initiatives often require extensive justification, multiple stakeholders, and lengthy approval cycles. Bringing forward existing priorities is a different conversation because the business value has already been established.

When building the case internally, focus on three things:

• • The project is already aligned with business or technology objectives.

  • There is a clear cost, risk, or opportunity associated with delaying it.

  • Bringing it forward creates additional value, whether that's improved security, earlier productivity gains, cost savings, or guaranteed delivery capacity.

The financial case is also straightforward. Committing before 30 June can secure additional value, remove resource uncertainty, and position the organisation to begin FY27 with delivery already underway.

If the project is defined, the provider is known, and timing is the primary variable, the approval process is often shorter than many teams expect.

Starting FY27 ahead

The organisations that extract the most value from their EOFY IT budget aren't scrambling to spend what's left. They're using available budget to accelerate work that will create meaningful outcomes in the year ahead.

The four-question readiness test provides a practical way to separate projects that are ready to move from those that require more planning. When the fit is right, bringing work forward before EOFY helps reduce uncertainty, secure delivery capacity, and start FY27 with momentum already in place.

If you're assessing which projects are worth bringing forward before EOFY, we can help you define the scope, evaluate the opportunity, and determine whether The Missing Link's prepaid professional services are a practical way to accelerate the work.