Business Outlook 2026: NZ businesses eye tech investments

New Zealand senior business leaders are heading into 2026 with a renewed sense of optimism, with 65% reporting they expect economic conditions to improve over the next 12 months.

This confidence is translating into action, with the majority (82%) of businesses planning to increase investment in technology to achieve their organisational goals.

The results come from Datacom’s annual Business Outlook survey, now in its third year, which surveyed 200 senior leaders from New Zealand organisations with more than 100 employees.

Datacom New Zealand Managing Director Peter Nelson says the survey results reflect the optimism Datacom is seeing from its customers.

"We’re seeing clear early signs of confidence across the business community. After a period of uncertainty, leaders are signalling that they’re ready to invest and innovate. This renewed optimism is a positive sign for the economy and for the role technology will play in driving growth. While the imperative to drive efficiency and carefully manage costs has not diminished, there’s renewed interest in investments aimed at stimulating growth.” 

Nelson says one of the foundations for this growth will be successfully modernising legacy systems.

“One of the conversations we’re having again and again with New Zealand organisations is the challenge of legacy technology and how hard it can be to modernise and make the most of technologies like AI and set the platform for growth. Our AI-driven approach to app modernisation, where AI agents work alongside people in development teams, is helping address some of the core obstacles to modernisation with several significant projects underway.”

When asked about the biggest technology opportunities for 2026, AI adoption and implementation topped the list at half (51%), followed by data optimisation (40%) and automation (30%). Of those prioritising AI, the most common focus was on integrating and scaling AI into core operations (31%), such as workflow optimisation or customer service and support.

This marks a clear turning point: Businesses are moving beyond pilot projects and towards enterprise-wide adoption. It’s a sharp contrast to late 2025, when Datacom’s State of AI Index revealed almost one in two (46%) of businesses were still stalled in the exploratory phase.

“Organisations are starting to be more strategic about their deployment of AI. Initially, we saw a lot of organisations deploying AI tools in an ad hoc way in specific areas of their business, but the net effect is that they get stuck in pilot mode and they can’t achieve the enterprise-wide impact businesses are looking for.

“It’s encouraging to see the conversation shift from 'if businesses should adopt AI’ to ‘how they can effectively scale it’, and at Datacom, we work with our customers to pinpoint the right opportunities within their business. Whether that’s improving customer service or enabling faster, data-driven decisions, every company is different, and the ways they can benefit from AI will vary,” says Datacom’s Director of AI, Louise Compagnone.

Growth emerged as the leading business priority for the year ahead (35%), however, concerns remain over economic uncertainty, with two in three senior business leaders naming it as their top perceived threat, followed by cybersecurity (24%) and future workforce concerns (19%).

While just under half (48%) of businesses reported a cybersecurity attack in the past 12 months – an increase of 13% on 2024 – only one in four see cybersecurity as a top threat for 2026.

“This drop in the perceived threat possibly reflects a bit of cybersecurity fatigue but it is vital that New Zealand organisations don’t lose focus – cyber-attacks present a huge risk and organisations need to be investing in cybersecurity and ensuring they have business recovery plans.”

Despite the appetite for technology investment, persistent barriers risk slowing progress. Budget constraints (31%) and a lack of skilled workforce (30%) were cited as the biggest challenges to successful adoption, alongside concerns about data quality.

The so-called ‘brain drain’ continues to weigh heavily on nearly half (42%) of respondents, with engineering skills identified as a critical skill at risk.

“A lot of the projects we’re going to see rolled out over the next 12 months will be reliant on highly skilled engineers paired with the smart use of AI. At Datacom, our software engineers are integral to our ability to innovate and, as we push to ensure AI produces the benefits and productivity gains that organisations are looking for, our engineers are critical to ensuring we can build solutions that enable us to harness and scale AI.”

The survey also explored attitudes towards government performance as the country heads into an election year and 43% of New Zealand business leaders believe the Government has done a good job of supporting local businesses.

The majority (71%) believe the Government needs more time to deliver on its promises, and 58% would like to see more focus on modernising the way it delivers services to citizens.

Business leaders still believe that boosting the economy should be the top focus area for the Government, by improving public services (43%). Together, these point to a significant opportunity for digital transformation in the public sector, from creating a single digital front door to leveraging AI for faster, more efficient service delivery.

“Technology has the ability to deliver the ‘better, faster and more reliable public services’ that New Zealanders are looking for. What’s needed to underpin this is truly modern, integrated platforms that can support a single digital front door for citizens, reducing duplication across agencies and deploying AI to speed up core services; the opportunity is significant.”

“Our Datascape platform is a great example of this and is being utilised by 75% of councils around the country,” says Nelson. “It takes an AI-enabled platform to transform community engagement for local councils, by delivering timely, location-based alerts and two-way communication for modern, citizen-focused services.”

The Datacom Business Outlook survey was conducted in December 2025 by Curia Market Research, with responses from 200 senior business leaders across New Zealand.