Smash Through Tech Debt with AI

Legacy tech isn’t just slowing systems—it’s holding entire businesses back. This research report, created in partnership with HFS, is based on insights from more than 600 IT and business leaders across industries and reveals a growing recognition that breaking free from tech debt requires more than new technology.

More than 80 percent of senior executives polled say AI is the breakthrough needed to finally overcome entrenched technical debt. But technology alone won’t get you there. Mindset and bold moves are required for this shift.

Success demands more than a quick fix. Access the full HFS Research Report for executive insight and hard data that can help you plan a bold escape from tech debt.

Inside this HFS Research Report you’ll find a blueprint for more than just technology overlays. We roadmap rebuilds from the ground up and provide practical guidance for the cost metrics that matter most.

Here are the five moves that separate AI-native leaders from those automating their stagnation:

1. Treating tech debt like financial debt and tracking, prioritizing and eliminating it
2. Building around AI rather than bolting it on
3. Moving from labor-first outsourcing to outcome-based partners
4. Pricing for business value, not effort
5. Redesigning roles, processes and culture for continuous AI-driven reinvention

Tech debt is no longer just a technical issue; it’s a structural liability. It slows innovation, drains budgets and locks enterprises into operating models that simply can’t keep up. Despite years of transformation, most large organizations remain anchored to foundations never designed for the speed, agility or intelligence today’s markets demand.

Our industry hasn’t helped. Too many service providers are still optimizing for effort over outcomes—measuring success in hours billed, not complexity removed. That model is obsolete.

At Publicis Sapient, we’ve taken a fundamentally different approach. We believe it’s time for a model that delivers the outcomes that matter—faster modernization, reduced tech debt and systems built for adaptability.

That’s why we created Sapient Slingshot, our AI-powered delivery model built on Sapient Bodhi, our enterprise-scale agentic AI platform. Together, they enable secure, context-aware and scalable transformation.

Slingshot brings together a powerful suite of capabilities: prompt libraries tailored to client-specific needs, persistent context binding across the software development lifecycle (SDLC), a dynamic agent architecture that ensures every software artifact is grounded in the right logic and intelligent AI workflows that orchestrate the entire SDLC.

It’s not just about accelerating delivery—it’s about rewiring how modernization gets done. With Slingshot, our multidisciplinary SPEED (Strategy, Product, Experience, Engineering and Data & AI) teams connect business goals to technical execution—end to end.

If you’re still paying for presence instead of performance—still layering new tech on top of legacy—you’re not standing still. You’re falling behind.

It’s time to break free.

• Get practical takeaways and insights from 600+ IT and business leaders worldwide
  
  
• Discover five bold moves business leaders are taking to demolish tech debt and shift to AI-first operating structures
  
  
• Learn why incremental change is failing and what it really takes to break the cycle
  
  
• Get the real numbers: 80 percent of leaders say AI will accelerate modernization; 60 percent would switch partners for real transformation
  
  
• Dates under related reading need to be org. published dates of those articles on legacy site