The ETR Insights team interviewed the head of Global Infrastructure Services for a global retail/consumer and manufacturing enterprise, who provided insights on IT budgets, global communications, ERP consolidation, and early successes with artificial intelligence. With a significant year-over-year increase nearing 10%, IT budget growth at this enterprise significantly outpaces the industry average. These substantial investments will support the global expansion of factories, warehouses, retail stores, and offices, as well as major re-platforming projects, including a strategic deployment of Microsoft Dynamics ERP across previously fragmented regional systems.

ETR Data: According to preliminary data from ETR’s April 2025 Macro Views Survey, our guest’s organization bucks the trend of softening IT budgets with a 10% budget increase expected for CY2025, far ahead of peer estimates.

Vendors Mentioned: Adyen / Aptos / Avaya / Cisco (Webex) / Microsoft (Copilot, Dynamics, Office, SharePoint, Teams) / OpenAI (ChatGPT) / Zoom

Key Takeaways

Early AI Successes with Copilot. This organization broadly deployed Microsoft's Copilot AI solution after carefully addressing internal employee concerns about AI data privacy through extensive internal educational initiatives. Explicit distinctions were drawn internally between secure, closed-system AI (Copilot) and external generative AI tools (ChatGPT), the latter being restricted early on due to uncertainties over external data handling. Our guest describes initial pushback from employees in adopting these tools: "We had knee-jerk reactions internally, 'We can't use AI because data becomes public.' We had to educate users carefully—Copilot is closed, internal, safe. ChatGPT we restricted because we weren't sure what data was leaving the company."

ETR Data: Out guest’s philosophy of measured AI innovation is in line with over half of his peers that took the APR25 Macro Views Survey; fifty-two percent (52%) of survey respondents say that their organization is “Strategically adopting AI and cloud but with a measured approached.”

Our guest says that Copilot’s functionality significantly reduces administrative burdens—particularly tasks like drafting meeting summaries and documenting action items. Yet, he emphasized continued reliance on human oversight for quality assurance: "People spend five minutes reviewing notes generated by Copilot versus 45 minutes manually going back through recordings. It saves typing but still needs quality checks by humans."

Looking ahead, this organization will continue prioritizing carefully controlled and incremental AI innovations. Our guest doesn’t expect AI adoption to directly reduce headcount; instead, he thinks it will moderate the growth rate of corporate office roles, enabling reallocation of resources toward frontline operational roles in retail and manufacturing environments. At the end of the day, this organization’s philosophy is to balance technological advancement with prudent risk management: "We're not bleeding edge; we prefer stability and incremental improvements. But we’re cautiously optimistic about what AI can bring—if managed carefully."

A ‘Chaotic’ Transition to Teams. Just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the enterprise undertook a strategic transition away from legacy Avaya PBX systems to a fully cloud-based Microsoft Teams environment. They briefly considered Cisco Webex due to their extensive existing Cisco infrastructure, but Teams quickly emerged as the decisive choice. The executive explained their pragmatic approach clearly, noting that after evaluating Cisco briefly, "it didn't take a lot to get to the Microsoft solution, and we quickly stuck with that. It actually helped our project because we didn't lose a year to paralysis-by-analysis."

Though the accelerated rollout amid the pandemic was described candidly as "a mad scramble," our guest highlighted how quickly Teams became essential to global remote communications. "The last 20% of the rollout was chaos—but within weeks, our whole organization was using Teams globally." Temporary instances of shadow IT using Zoom diminished rapidly after global deployment of Teams. Today, Microsoft Teams remains the exclusive communications platform globally, supported by SIP trunking for external telephony, with strategic contingency measures provided through backup cloud services.

ERP Modernization. A central tenet of this organization’s strategy is a global ERP consolidation effort, replacing fragmented regional legacy systems with Microsoft Dynamics. Dynamics was specifically chosen for its global scalability, international compliance capabilities, and financially favorable terms under their existing Microsoft licensing agreement as well as its integration potential with Microsoft's broader ecosystem. "We have multiple ERP systems dotted globally—Microsoft Dynamics truly consolidates everything onto one platform. Microsoft's ecosystem just has more bolt-on functionality, especially around global payments and compliance." Though in early stages, the organization anticipates significant operational efficiency gains upon project completion.

Complexity in Global Operations. The executive highlighted persistent complexities in standardizing global payment solutions, noting reliance on multiple vendors including Aptos and Adyen. He described global payment standardization as a continual challenge: "We standardized on a payment system, suddenly found it doesn't work everywhere, so now we have a second and third." Further complicating matters are stringent compliance demands (GDPR, PCI, emerging U.S. state-level privacy laws), where Microsoft and specialized implementation partners provide critical advisory support.

Despite extensive cloud adoption, physical global internet connectivity remains significantly fragmented, presenting ongoing infrastructure challenges. "It still comes down to the local loop—getting quality internet service globally remains a substantial challenge," the executive explained, noting the managerial complexity of working with "82 to 85 vendors globally."