Help Your Partners Help Themselves: Elevate Indirect CX
B2B firms now generate more than half of their revenue through partner channels, yet many lack post‑sale visibility into indirect customer interactions. This blind spot leads to uneven experiences, higher service costs, churn, and missed expansion opportunities. Forrester’s 2026 Partner Ecosystem Marketing Survey highlights that 41% of revenue can be attributed to indirect routes, underscoring the urgency for intentional CX frameworks. The upcoming B2B Summit North America will showcase a template to align suppliers and partners on post‑sale engagement.
Agentic Prospecting: Seven Reasons The Hype Falls Short
The sales‑tech sector is touting autonomous AI agents that can monitor accounts, detect buying intent, and execute outreach without human input. The article outlines seven reasons why this hype is premature, citing unreliable intent signals, limited automatable tasks, activity‑driven noise,...
What Marketing Leaders Should Not Miss At CX Forum East
The CX Forum East, hosted by Forrester, spotlights how AI is redefining every stage of the B2C consumer journey—from zero‑click discovery to AI‑mediated commerce—while trust erodes faster than ever. The event’s keynote and new Total Experience Score, now augmented with an...
Context Graphs Are A Convergence, Not An Invention
ServiceNow’s new Context Engine has revived talk of “context graphs,” but the idea is not new. For four decades enterprise architecture, APM, process mining and other IT disciplines have been building fragmented graphs of assets, dependencies and workflows. The emerging...
What To Know When Evaluating Sensitive Data Discovery And Classification Solutions
The Forrester Wave™ Q2 2026 evaluates the leading sensitive data discovery and classification solutions, emphasizing accuracy, scalability, and breadth of data‑source coverage. Vendors now claim 95%‑plus detection rates and support cloud, on‑prem, and in‑motion scanning, but buyers must validate performance in...
Customer Success Enters The Agentic Era
Gainsight has launched the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a framework that lets AI agents pull and act on customer‑success data from Gainsight CS and Staircase AI in a single call. By unifying health scores, usage metrics, sentiment signals and relationship...
Agentic Payments In B2C Commerce: Where We Are Now
Agentic commerce remains in its infancy, with US consumer adoption of AI‑driven checkout staying under 5% and showing little momentum. The protocol arena is split between Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol and OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol, while Alibaba’s Alipay and the...
When Cyber Insurance Meets Cyber War, Coverage Becomes Conditional
The rise of state‑sponsored cyber attacks, highlighted by Iran’s recent operations, is reshaping cyber‑insurance contracts. Insurers now base payouts on attribution and geopolitical context rather than purely on technical breach details, turning war‑exclusion clauses into decisive triggers. This change forces...
OpenClaw Is Dead — Long Live OpenClaw
Anthropic notified the author that OpenClaw, a Claude‑based personal assistant, would become a metered service, pushing daily costs to $25‑$50. To avoid the expense, the author shifted to OpenRouter, routing calls to the cheaper Kimi 2.5 model, while still retaining Claude...
CISOs Have Plenty Of Work To Do In An AI-Driven Future
AI is reshaping the chief information security officer’s (CISO) mandate from protecting infrastructure to guaranteeing trustworthy AI outcomes. As autonomous agents proliferate across enterprises, traditional security controls can’t scale, prompting regulators to demand documented guardrails and auditable behavior. Forrester’s new...
Banks Are Leaving A Billion-Dollar SMB Segment On The Table
Banks are systematically overlooking a fast‑growing segment of small‑ and medium‑size businesses that generate billions in revenue but lack traditional paperwork. Legacy risk models and 1990s‑era classification codes treat these “new‑economy” SMBs as high‑risk, leading to frequent declines or downgrades....
Make Smarter GTM Decisions With Intelligence At B2B Summit
The B2B Summit North America will host a workshop titled “Use Market Intelligence To Make Smarter GTM Decisions,” led by Barbara Winters and a co‑host. Attendees will learn how to replace product‑centric, assumption‑driven go‑to‑market plans with data‑backed strategies. The session...
The Expanding Universe Of GRC For AI: Key Questions From Technology Leaders
Forrester warns that AI governance is expanding faster than traditional GRC frameworks can keep pace. As organizations adopt autonomous agents, static policies and committees prove insufficient, demanding integrated technologies to monitor model drift and enforce guardrails. Leaders are grappling with...
Reinvent Buyer Personas And Journeys Using the Power Of AI
At Forrester’s B2B North America Summit, a roundtable will explore how AI can transform static buyer personas and journey maps into living, decision‑driving assets. The session will show how machine‑learning models detect behavior shifts, update assumptions in real time, and...
Stop Calling It Debt — It’s A Liability
Murray Cantor, a PhD mathematician with high‑risk project experience at IBM and Boeing, argues that the vague term “technical debt” should be replaced by a quantifiable liability. By assigning a dollar value to unresolved code issues, firms can treat IT...
What Would You Ask If You Had 20 Minutes With A B2B Analyst?
Forrester is offering registered attendees of B2B Summit North America a private 20‑minute one‑on‑one with one of its analysts. The sessions are designed to cut through AI‑generated noise and give leaders clear, research‑backed perspective on pressing decisions. Participants bring a...
The Real Reason Journey Mapping Stalls — And The Certification That Helps Leaders Fix It
Many CX teams invest heavily in journey mapping but struggle to translate insights into measurable outcomes. The new CX Certification: Advance To Journey Management, offered at CX Forum East in New York on June 16‑17, 2026, aims to turn journeys into an...
Inside The Elite And Team Advantage Experiences At B2B Summit North America
Forrester’s B2B Summit North America now offers two Team Experience Packages—Elite for 20+ attendees and Team Advantage for 12+ attendees—designed to turn the conference into a focused working session. Both tiers provide a pre‑event research kickoff, dedicated analyst time, white‑glove...
Beyond The Wave: What Customers Really Think About Autonomous Testing Platforms
Forrester’s Q4 2025 Wave highlighted 15 vendors delivering AI‑powered autonomous testing platforms, and its Q1 2026 Buyer’s Guide surveyed 37 enterprise users. Customers reported automation coverage climbing to 51‑60% of tests, with a few teams exceeding 80%, yet full autonomy remains low...
Agentic Development Security: Why AppSec Needs A New Operating Model
Application security is being reshaped by faster exploit cycles and the rise of AI‑driven coding agents. Traditional testing tools now detect vulnerabilities but struggle to provide real‑world context such as exploitability and business impact. Large language models are enabling richer...
Power Growth With Synthetic Data — Lessons From Qualtrics X4
At Qualtrics X4, the company highlighted synthetic data as a transformative tool for market research. Synthetic data creates virtual respondents that mimic real‑world behavior without direct personal links, allowing far more complex studies at a fraction of traditional costs. Early...
Announcing The Winners Of Forrester’s 2026 B2B Return On Integration Honors For North America
Forrester announced the 2026 B2B Return On Integration Honors winners for North America, highlighting companies that have aligned marketing, revenue, product, and customer success functions to drive measurable growth. Amazon Ads pivoted to serve service‑based SMBs with its “Matches Are...
Siemens RXD Summit 2026: Industrial AI Shifts From Models To Systems, And China Is The Proving Ground
Siemens held its inaugural RXD Summit in Beijing, positioning China as the central proving ground for its next‑generation industrial AI strategy. The company announced a shift from focusing on foundation models to delivering an industrial AI operating system that unites...
Balance Control When Negotiating With Salesforce
Salesforce’s 2024 launch of Agentforce marks its shift to an AI‑first, multicloud strategy, which the analyst calls “AI gravity.” The new approach bundles AI, data and automation into larger contracts, increasing buyer reliance on Salesforce. Forrester warns that customers typically...
Agentic Commerce-Era Lessons From Social Commerce And Digital Ad Channels
Agentic commerce is being touted as the next evolution of online shopping, echoing the hype that surrounded social commerce a few years ago. The article distills four lessons from social commerce—value proposition, flawless experience, right‑channel targeting, and trust—that are critical...
SAP’s Reltio Acquisition Forces A Choice For CIOs
SAP announced acquisition of Reltio, integrating its master data management platform into SAP Business Data Cloud. The move gives SAP control over the enterprise master data layer, especially for customers with mixed SAP and non‑SAP environments. By embedding Reltio, SAP...
Data + AI Brings The Next-Generation CDP Into View
Customer data platforms have solidified as a core martech component, with the vendor landscape consolidating into a clear top tier and a unified definition emerging. Marketers are demanding more reliable, AI‑enhanced solutions that respect privacy and deliver measurable ROI. The...
The State Of Stablecoin In Japan
Japan’s first regulated yen‑pegged stablecoin, JPYC, launched in October 2025 after the 2023 revision of the Payment Services Act. Operating under a Type II funds‑transfer license, JPYC can issue and redeem up to ¥1 million (≈US$6,700) per user daily and targets roughly ¥10 trillion...
The Forrester Wave™: Data Quality Solutions, Q1 2026
The Forrester Wave™: Data Quality Solutions, Q1 2026 reveals a decisive shift toward AI‑driven automation, real‑time observability, and multimodal data handling. Vendors now embed generative and agentic AI to profile, classify, validate, and remediate data at scale, moving beyond traditional rule‑based...
Please Test Your AI Agents — Like, At All
Enterprises deploying AI agents must rigorously test every feature before launch, using both manual checks and structured testing programs. Red‑team exercises—covering security exploits and behavioral misuse—are recommended to surface hidden failure modes. Synthetic prompt‑answer suites and continuous, automated evaluation platforms...
Rising Infrastructure Costs Aren’t A Blip — They’re A Reset
Enterprise infrastructure costs are climbing 10‑20% as AI‑driven demand monopolizes GPU, high‑bandwidth memory, and flash production. Commodity components like standard RAM and HDDs face shrinking supply, extending lead times and shortening quote validity. The price pressure is expected to persist...
Email Service Providers Use AI To Inspire An Email Functionality Leap
The Forrester Wave™ Q1 2026 reveals that artificial intelligence is reshaping email service providers (ESPs), delivering conversational interfaces, hyper‑personalized one‑to‑one messaging, and smarter inbox optimization. AI now powers data onboarding, automatic compliance checks, and dynamic user‑specific platform interfaces across 12 evaluated...
Understand The Martech Ecosystem To Optimize Investment Planning
Forrester released its Q1 2026 Tech Tide report, redefining the B2C martech ecosystem after six years of rapid change. The study shows that vendors have moved beyond proving basic virtual‑event delivery to competing on integrated capabilities such as AI‑driven engagement and...
In Their Words: Why Executives Choose Forrester
Forrester's customer‑success team reports that executives are seeing measurable returns from its AI research. Forty‑six percent say the guidance accelerates decision‑making, while 44 % credit it with lowering risk, and a smaller but notable 10 % link the insights to winning or...
Why IBM Paid $11B For Real-Time AI, Not Kafka
IBM completed an $11 billion acquisition of Confluent on March 17, 2026, adding the leading data‑streaming platform used by over 6,500 enterprises, including 40 % of the Fortune 500. IBM frames the deal as buying an AI‑focused data platform that delivers real‑time data to power...
Your Essential “Pack” To Select A Digital Analytics Solution: Start From Use Cases, End With Feature Comparison
Selecting a digital analytics vendor often begins with feature comparisons, but Forrester advises starting with business use cases and value objectives. The Forrester Wave™: Digital Analytics Solutions, Q3 2025 offers a technology matrix, while the Digital Analytics Solutions Landscape (Q2 2025) and...
It’s Time To Get Your Customers Sorted — No Wizardry Required
The article likens B2B post‑sale customer segmentation to Hogwarts’ Sorting Hat, urging firms to move beyond superficial metrics. It argues that relying on revenue or account size misreads needs, causing overserving and missed growth signals. Effective segmentation should uncover adoption...
Apparel And Footwear Brands Must Own Their Destinies To Survive
Forrester’s 2025 Digital Go‑To‑Market Review of apparel and footwear brands finds that companies owning sales, storytelling, and consumer relationships will outpace rivals in a fragmented retail environment. The shift from wholesale to direct‑to‑consumer and marketplace models gives brands unprecedented control...
Banks Are Losing Their Place In Small Business Decisions — Here’s How To Reclaim It
Small businesses increasingly make financial decisions within daily workflow platforms, pushing banks to a reactive role. As banks remain product‑centric and slow, they lose influence despite holding accounts. The article defines "relationship sovereignty" as embedding banking services early in these...
Twitter’s Twentieth: It’s Complicated
Forrester research shows social media is now the second most meaningful source of information for B2B buyers, trailing only generative AI search tools. The article marks Twitter’s 20‑year anniversary, highlighting how its real‑time publishing created “now moments” that transformed brand...
Intelligent Finance: From Digital Experiences To AI‑Orchestrated Financial Outcomes
Financial institutions are moving beyond digitized journeys and isolated AI pilots toward "intelligent finance," where systems understand intent, anticipate needs, and act on customers' behalf. This shift replaces assistive interfaces with autonomous, outcome‑driven financial assistants that reshape experiences, operations, and...
Why Having Digital Insights Doesn’t Always Translate To Digital Outcomes
The 2026 State of Digital Intelligence report finds that while 40% of digital leaders rank data and insights as top priorities, execution gaps keep results modest. Fewer than 10% of digital staff are dedicated to intelligence and many organizations remain...
From Sedimentary To Strategic: Rethinking Security Organizational Design
Security leaders often let organizational structures evolve unintentionally, mirroring past breaches, regulations, and technology shifts rather than current business realities. Forrester’s new research introduces five distinct security organization models—centralized, federated, business‑centric, product‑centric, and oversight center—to help CISOs make deliberate design...
Starbucks’ Loyalty Program Upgrade Felt Like A Downgrade — Here’s Why
Starbucks revamped its rewards program, introducing green, gold and reserve tiers and adding non‑transactional ways to earn stars such as reusable‑cup usage and gamified challenges. The update also changed star expiration rules, giving higher tiers permanent credit. However, the rollout...
Connection, Confidence, And Community: A Look Inside The Forrester Women’s Leadership Program
The Forrester Women’s Leadership Program, featured at the B2B Summit North America, centers on building community, mentorship, and inclusive leadership for women at every career stage. Hosts Maria Chien and Phyllis Davidson describe a schedule woven throughout the three‑day event,...
Power Couple OpenAI + Amazon May Have Just Won Consumer Agentic Commerce
OpenAI and Amazon announced a strategic partnership on Feb. 27, 2026, featuring a $50 billion investment by Amazon. Within weeks, OpenAI removed its Instant Checkout from ChatGPT, while Amazon introduced Shop Direct feed support and expanded its Rufus chatbot to complete purchases....
The Security Priorities APAC And EMEA Leaders Doubled Down On — And Deprioritized — In H2 2025
In H2 2025 APAC and EMEA security leaders shifted priorities, placing GRC at the top, focusing on AI agentic risk, and boosting API/software supply‑chain security. AI adoption moved to securing autonomous systems, while application security resurfaced. Quantum security and human...
The Consent Deficit: RBI’s Draft RBC Directions Turn Mis-Selling Into A Proof Problem
India’s RBI is set to tighten Responsible Business Conduct rules, requiring banks to prove product‑by‑product consent rather than merely collecting signatures. The draft, effective July 1 2026, bans compulsory bundling, bans dark‑pattern UI tricks, and mandates refunds when mis‑selling is proven. It...
Compensation Without Chaos: Designing Plans That Work
Sales compensation plans are under intense scrutiny as companies grapple with volatility. The article argues that overly complex plans hinder productivity, while overly simple ones miss revenue nuances, and proposes a balanced approach that keeps designs straightforward yet aligned with...
Unified Financial Crime Management Is Not Just For Small And Regional Banks
Financial institutions are moving beyond siloed fraud‑management and anti‑money‑laundering tools toward unified Financial Crime Management Solutions (FCMSes). The shift is driven by regulators tightening AML oversight, fraudsters blending scams with laundering, and the high cost of maintaining separate AI models...