Recognize Indirect Partner Value in Indirect Sales Channels

As more vendors and channel leaders recognize and accept how indirect value and demand generation impact the wider ecosystem, measures of partner success are being redefined. Revenue-centered metrics remain critical, however, traditional one-size-fits-all approaches are giving way to more nuanced and intelligent ways of recognizing and rewarding partners. By 2025, IDC predicts that two-thirds of vendors will deploy an incentive stack framework that recognizes different partner roles and rewards them intelligently.

Simply put— separate partners can play specific roles with different levels of value attached at various stages in a single customer journey. As a result, the value partners create is no longer viewed as solely tied to revenue generation; it extends across different spheres of influence, transaction, consumption, and optimization (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Sample Ecosystem Sales Model

This complexity arises from the multitude of sales motions, purchase models, and solution deployment options available to customers. As a result, incentive stack models must be capable of allocating value across the entire customer lifecycle. The allocation depends on the type of solution, deployment model, partner involvement, and the relative importance of each function within the customer journey.

The Evolving Channel and Incentive Models

As we move towards everything-as-a-service and subscription models, traditional incentive models are losing relevance. Many vendors find themselves in the challenging position of maintaining relationships with partners who have built their business models around the traditional incentive stack while adapting to the changing demands of partners with next-generation incentive stacks.

In this evolving landscape, the concept of partner value will evolve beyond the simplistic assessment of revenue and sales volume and extend into spheres of influence and long-term value creation. Partners who prioritize building lasting relationships with customers will see increasing value attached to their roles as financial metrics within the incentive stack are recalibrated. 

To keep pace with these changes, vendors must encourage and facilitate the detachment of partner roles within the ecosystem. This detachment can lead to improvements in customer acquisition, retention, and overall experience.

Recognizing Influence as a Valuable Role

One of the most significant shifts in partner value metrics is the recognition that some partners influence customer purchasing decisions without desiring the transaction or consumption revenue on their books. This influence role is complex and challenging to quantify. It often involves processes like partner of record and deal registration, which are already surrounded by significant complexity. 

Consider a distributor, for example, acting as an influencer by generating customer demand through partners, while procurement and provisioning occur through a cloud marketplace. The value of SaaS-based Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) within cloud platform partner ecosystems often stems from the indirect demand generation they drive through underlying Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud consumption. 

Ensure Continuity with Transactionally Focused Partners

Partners that drive transactions and revenue continue to play a pivotal role, particularly in the context of CapEx-based technology spending by customers. However, the shift toward OpEx-based technology spending is becoming the driving force behind the design of “next-generation” incentive stacks. 

Some vendors are currently navigating both worlds simultaneously. Still, there’s a growing acceptance that creating relevant and future-proof partner value metrics is essential for the overall health and vitality of the wider partner ecosystem. 

For vendors, it’s imperative to ensure that the evolution of the partner incentive stack aligns with anticipated or planned changes in customer purchasing and deployment models. Building flexibility into the incentive stack allocation between partners remains crucial as models continue to evolve.

Vendors must also inform existing transaction-focused partners of proposed changes to the incentive stack and create pathways that enable them to transform their businesses in alignment with shifts in customer behavior and preferences. The intelligent allocation of the incentive stack, based on partner function and the value this provides to both customers and vendors, is the cornerstone of an adaptable, flexible, and future-focused ecosystem-based partnering approach. 

Inform Your Incentive Models with IDC

The future of partnership strategies for enterprise tech vendors is rapidly evolving. As vendors look to gain a more nuanced understanding of how changing partner activities create value across customer lifecycles, it is critical to examine partnership dynamics both internal and external to your own ecosystem. 

IDC’s Channel Partner Ecosystem (“CPE”) provides an in-depth view of the channels and partners of tech vendors, giving you insight into competitors’ partnerships, areas of technology coverage, industries served, geographic location data, and much more. Learn more about IDC CPE here.

While the journey toward redefining partner value metrics is already underway, it’s one that all enterprise tech vendors should be prepared to navigate. To help get you started, be sure to check out IDC’s Starter Guide: Modernize Your Incentive Stack for Channel Partners.

Without a doubt, 2023 has been the year of generative AI (GenAI). Its different applications offer every part of every organization the opportunity to be more productive. This is especially true for emerging and expanding tech startups and entrepreneurs, who often juggle many balls with way too few resources.

“As industries transition to use GenAI to automate or augment every process, project, or interaction, the measure of success will be in improving productivity and reducing the level of effort to complete the task in a secure, compliant, and trustworthy manner.”

(Marci Maddox, Research Vice President, Persuasive Content and Digital Experience Strategies, IDC)

GenAI is not just a tool but a game-changer for emerging tech vendors, offering a multitude of ways to assist and empower startups. In this blog, we’ll explore how GenAI can transform your startup and help you succeed in 2024 and beyond.

Market Research and Analysis

Understanding your target market is vital for any startup. It’s the foundation upon which your entire business is built. GenAI can be a startup’s secret weapon in market research and analysis, and a recent IDC survey showed that 45% of digital native businesses (DNBs) are already investing in GenAI technologies, with another 34% exploring its use cases for their companies.

In a world awash with data, GenAI can efficiently sift through vast amounts of information to identify trends, customer preferences, and potential market gaps. By processing user-generated content, social media data, and industry reports, GenAI can help you make data-driven decisions that are backed by thorough and up-to-date insights. This not only saves time but also provides a deeper understanding of your market, enabling you to adapt and respond swiftly to changes and opportunities.

Content Generation

Content is the lifeblood of digital marketing, and in today’s fast-paced world, maintaining a consistent flow of high-quality content can be challenging. GenAI can be your content creation partner. From generating product descriptions and blog posts to crafting social media updates, this technology can save your startup time and effort. By using machine learning and natural language processing, GenAI can create content that is not only informative but also engaging. You can focus on the bigger picture while your content needs are met with precision, ensuring that your messaging remains cohesive and professional.

Marketing and Advertising

Digital marketing is a critical component of a startup’s growth strategy. GenAI can enhance your marketing efforts by creating targeted ad campaigns, optimizing SEO, and even developing marketing strategies based on competitor analysis. With its ability to process and interpret vast amounts of marketing data, GenAI can provide insights that drive effective marketing campaigns. By optimizing your digital marketing initiatives, you can reach your target audience more effectively, maximize your marketing ROI, and stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Financial Analysis

Financial management is a fundamental aspect of startup survival. GenAI can assist startups in managing their finances with precision and foresight. By using historical financial data and advanced algorithms, GenAI can help with financial forecasting, budgeting, and expense tracking. With this technology, you can have a clear and data-driven picture of your startup’s financial health. By maintaining a solid grasp of your financial situation, you can make informed decisions, secure funding, and ensure your startup’s financial stability.

Competitive Intelligence

Keeping an eye on the competition is essential for a startup’s success. GenAI can play a vital role in competitive intelligence. By monitoring and analyzing competitor activities, this technology helps you stay informed about what your rivals are doing in the market. It can provide insights into their strategies, product launches, and customer interactions. Armed with this information, you can identify opportunities or threats in your market more effectively. GenAI doesn’t just help you keep pace with the competition; it empowers you to lead and innovate within your industry.

Personalization

One-size-fits-all solutions are no longer sufficient in the modern tech landscape. Personalization is key, and GenAI can help startups deliver personalized experiences. Whether it’s tailoring product recommendations, customizing user interfaces, or offering unique solutions, GenAI can enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. By understanding individual customer preferences and behaviors, you can create products and experiences that resonate with your target audience on a personal level. This personalization not only fosters customer loyalty but also increases your chances of repeat business and referrals.

Product Development

Startups often face a race against time to develop and launch their products. GenAI can be a catalyst in this process, helping you streamline and accelerate product development. From generating code and designing user interfaces (UI/UX) to suggesting features based on market demand, GenAI can save time and resources while ensuring your product is well-aligned with the needs of your target audience. This can give your startup a considerable competitive advantage, as it allows you to innovate rapidly and bring high-quality products to market more efficiently.

How Can My Business Take Advantage Of GenAI?

To maximize the benefits of GenAI technology, organizations should assess their low-risk processes, content, projects, communications, or activities and determine whether GenAI tools can improve these tasks. A successful GenAI strategy should consider one or more of the following adoption approaches:

By specific use cases or scenarios (such as knowledge capture, skills training, and employee/customer onboarding).
By content form or format (including code blocks or product descriptions).
By feature or function (for example, metadata assignment/analysis and fostering collaboration between teams).
By availability (build or buy).

Converting GenAI’s potential into use cases that generate business value requires a clear-eyed understanding of current limitations and challenges. GenAI technology is powerful, but it is not fully mature and presents opportunities for misuse.

IDC’s leading-edge expertise and insight into GenAI trends, opportunities, requirements, and challenges help you elevate conversations and better engage with your customers.

Are you ready to meet the challenge? Contact us today to discuss how IDC can help you succeed with GenAI.

Public trust in institutions and national leaders, across the globe, has declined for decades with alarming consistency.

This trend is alarming because trust acts as a sort of bellwether for many critical components of our everyday lives: the perceived moral quality of society, the perceived strength of the country’s government, belief in the competence of national leadership, belief in the possibilities of the future, and in economic potential.

When trust is low, nations collapse, religion collapses, democracy collapses. The youngest two generations of our current workforce, Gen Z and Millennials, are especially untrusting – an unsurprising reality for two generations who are navigating a world without the sense of security that characterized the 1950s and 1960s (and an argument can be made for the 90s), eras marked by family stability and relative prosperity, against which rebellion against authority and a strong sense of individuality could flourish.

In contrast, the GenZ and Millennial experience is marked by precariousness – by the time baby boomers hit the age of 35 in 1990, they collectively owned 21 percent of American wealth. Millennials who this year hit the age of 35 own just 3.2 percent of American wealth. These economic indicators are unsettling for trust researchers because we can anticipate that further declines in trust are coming, and with that anticipated decline in trust are further constraints to economic growth.

So imagine the surprise when one group bucked the trust decline trend: Trust in business has increased for Americans. And only Americans. (Source: 2023 Edelman Trust Survey).

This finding confirms a suspicion that has been brewing, but to fully flesh my thinking out, we have to go back to a seminal contribution to trust research: The Trust Game. The Trust Game is a game theory exercise (related to the Dictator Game) that simulates a trust end-state based on the moves of two individuals who have been given a small sum of money (one coin).

If Player 1 puts their one coin into a machine, Player 2 will get 3 coins. Player 2 can then decide whether to put in one coin themselves which turns into 3 coins for Player 1, or Player 2 can give zero coins and leave with 4 coins, while Player 1 leaves with no coins. The creators of the game complicate the parameters of the Trust Game by adding strategy variations: some players “always cooperate”, some players “always cheat”, and some players simply repeats the moves of the other player, “the copycat”.

If player 1 cheats, the copycat cheats, if player 1 cooperates, the copycat cooperates. These various strategies shake out like this: in a game where there is a player who “always cheats” and a player who “always cooperates”, cheaters do not win big. Everyone might leave the table with maybe a little bit of something, but it’s only a little bit. In a game of only “always cooperate” players, the end result is a big win for everyone. All players, including the players who always cheat, are better off because of the player who always cooperates.

But if we eliminate the cooperators and introduce copycats (players who will do as their neighbor does), they will eventually eliminate the cooperators and produce a society entirely of copycats or a society entirely of cheaters, depending on the number of interactions. A lower number of interactions produces a society of cheaters, a higher number of interactions produces a society of copycats.  

Now, if fewer interactions will produce a society comprised entirely of cheaters, then where are we headed when we can have groceries delivered to our doorstep without speaking to a single person, have pizza delivered via an app, and connect with potential mates outside of the communities we live and work using dating apps? These questions bring us back to the hypothesis and to the increasing levels of trust in business for American respondents: for some individuals, interactions with large organizations ARE their most frequent interactions and thus have the potential to be the most trusted interactions.

I might never speak to my next-door neighbor, but I will interact with Google, Amazon, or Microsoft one or two (or forty) times a day. I might talk to my brother on the phone every couple of week or so but will likely shop at Target, Walmart, Costco – whatever your big box store of choice – every week.

Trust forms through repeat interactions. If there is no possibility of a repeated interaction, there is no real need for trust. It’s for this reason that tourist traps are, in fact, traps. The majority of visitors to that area are unlikely to come back, at least in the short term, and as a result, the quality of goods can be shoddier, the food can be of poorer quality, and the overall experience can be somewhat lacking. Contrast that with your neighborhood bakery or cafe, whose success depends on the repeat patronage of neighborhood residents – the coffee and pastries are excellent, or the variety of goods perfectly meets your needs – something desirable compels you to return. That bakery or cafe has built their long-term viability on the trust their customers have in the business.

The IDC Future of Trust program is focused on what engenders and maintains trust in business, and what security, privacy, compliance, and ESG offerings lend themselves most to trust and trustworthiness. We also focus research on what breaks trust, as in the recently published survey spotlight on what was perceived to be the greatest “trust-breaking” event for businesses.

Research has long shown that trust, when compared to direct oversight, facilitates more efficient operations, mitigates the adverse outcomes of negative events such as data breaches, and is a pre-requisite to getting individuals to share high-quality personal information. IDC research has shown that trust confers benefits onto key business outcomes as well, namely in the areas of business resilience, operational efficiency, and sustainability.

In the coming months the IDC Future of Trust Program will offer greater insight into the nature of trust and into key features of trust, with empirical research applied to trusted AI, trusted Security and Privacy, and trust by industry. Stay tuned.

2023 is nearing an end and organizations must work to map out budgets and spending plans for 2024 and beyond. As a CX practitioner, are you considering all key aspects of these programs and planning for them?

This has been a year of exceptional turbulence due to expectations for a recession, military actions in Europe and now the Middle East, and inflation remaining high. IDC found that 67% of respondents in October 2023 think there will be a recession in the coming year, and 37% of global respondents said their biggest concern was “inflation driving up vendor pricing beyond budget expectations”.

Yet, organizations remain committed to their CX programs.  IDC found that Customer Experience (CX) initiatives and projects are a priority being “most immune to budget reduction regardless of the economic environment” and “continued investment is a must in the next 12 months”. CX comes in second only behind Security, Risk & Compliance initiatives.

While it is interesting to see these projects remain high on the priority list, it is clear that a thorough review and refresh on what is needed for successful programs be undertaken as we roll into next year. 

“Voice of the Customer (VoC) and CX practitioners are clearly focused on metrics and outcomes of their programs.  They are being challenged by management to show Return on Investment for their programs as quickly as possible or risk a pull back in investments.”

Key areas for consideration in these programs are:

Maturity of program – VoC programs often start with structured surveys to solicit for customer feedback and then grow to include unstructured data and even inferred data. (see “Voice of the Customer” Programs: Where Are They Today? More Importantly, Where Are They Going?”) Depending on what stage of this maturity spectrum a program is on will dictate the investment in software and services to support it.  Rather than move from one type of customer feedback data to another, programs often are cumulative in the data they gather.
Staffing and Skillset – VoC programs are required to have skillsets to not only listen and gather customer feedback, but to analyze it, and integrate solutions to act on it through sales, marketing, support and customer success. They also need program managers, data scientists, IT support (including app and web development) and sponsorship in each functional department tied into the program. Practitioners should consider if they are prepared to provide these skillsets internally or find an appropriate partner that can offer these services.  In addition, this partnership can change over time as an organization decides to move to either outsource more of this work, or take it on internally.
Make sure to engage your customers – Customers today expect their brands to not only listen to them where they want to be (social media, product review sites, communities), but show them they are listening and engage them.  A recent WSJ article discussed how TikTok can be used to suggest ideas for new products or services, and if a brand is not quick to see the suggestion and follow up, a competitor could swoop in with a new product and quickly take share from the brand. Investments in CX and VoC programs should not only consider resources to engage the customers, but product development budgets should consider unexpected ideas that need to be addressed quickly.  Customers today are demanding great customer engagements and moving on to new brands if they feel they are not getting them. 
GenAI – The buzz around this new technology is getting significant attention in the CX space.  The opportunities to improve customer interactions via natural language interfaces and internal improvements such as feedback summarizations and insights has the potential for process and experience improvements. This can lead to potential hyper-personalization experiences where products can know their customers individually and dynamically update digital products and services to meet their real-time needs.  Being so new, the GenAI offerings on the market are still working out pricing options.  CX practitioners should consider budget items for GenAI as they move forward to ensure they can consider some form of implementation of them in 2024 and beyond.
Enterprise-wide programs – Customers today expect brands to understand and coordinate the different functional teams involved in customer engagements.  Marketing campaigns, sales efforts, and digital commerce and support all have to know what the other is doing to ensure customers do not receive disconnected emails, phone calls, etc. They also want to know that the calls or emails they do receive have taken account for their history (why receive an email to buy more of a new product if the customer has indicated they are not happy with the old one?)
Metrics and outcomes – Any program, CX or other, should have key metrics and outcome expectations followed to ensure they are having a positive effect on the organization.  Net Promoter Score (NPS – relational and transactional), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Overall Customer Satisfaction (OSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES) are just a few of the most common metrics.  IDC is predicting that “By 2027, one-fourth of global brands will abandon CSAT as a measure of customer experience and adopt a Customer Effort Score correlated to outcomes as a key indicator of journey satisfaction and success” Reducing churn, improving annual recurring revenue, and improving customer lifetime value are business outcomes frequently used.  Tying metrics to investments in CX and VoC programs is key to ensuring they are performing for the organization.

While the list could go on, these are just a few of key areas to consider for updating your CX and VoC programs for next year.  The key action items to consider are to know where your customers want to be heard.  Be there, listen, and let them know you are listening.

The success of your content strategy hinges on aligning with the dynamic needs of your audience. As we step into 2024, it’s crucial to reassess and optimize your approach. Here are five overarching themes to make your B2B content more successful in the coming year:

1. Replace the Nonlinear Marketing Funnel

Bid farewell to the traditional marketing funnel. Marketers and sales teams today aren’t just talking with one buyer but with an entire buying cohort. Within an organization, over a dozen individuals may express distinct needs, driven by their respective tasks to be accomplished. Historically, sales and marketing adhered to a linear model—the funnel. However, the paradigm has shifted away from the progression of a lone individual through a linear journey. The funnel, once standard, lacks customer centricity and may explain the challenges faced by marketing and sales in nurturing and building relationships across the entire spectrum of the buying committee.

In 2024, it’s essential to move beyond the linear model. Based on extensive research, IDC’s new Adaptive Customer Experience (ACE) model is a circular and evolving framework and not linear at all, like its predecessor. This is because engagement with tech buyers is no longer linear.

B2B buyers have B2C experience expectations today.  They expect you, as a vendor, to understand and provide solutions for their challenges, jobs to done and business outcomes. ACE is a customer-centric framework to evolve how you go to market. 

Marketing is the conductor of orchestrated journey engagement, with data, automation and analytics to make this all work.

Laurie Buczek, Research VP, CMO Advisory Practices

And perhaps most importantly, to fully engage with a buyer, marketing and sales need to play on the same field. Put another way, no longer should the two functional groups be looked at as if they are running a relay race, where marketing passes a baton onto sales to finish the race. In fact, it’s not a race, it’s a customer experience journey.

2. Fast and Cost-Effective Digital Marketing Content Integration

In the race for B2B leads, content integration emerges as a critical strategy for effective lead generation. The quest for valuable B2B leads demands a streamlined approach to filling the content pipeline promptly and economically. One powerful tactic in achieving this goal is the incorporation of licensed content into your strategy. This approach is twofold in its advantages: it not only expedites content production but also brings in valuable perspectives from industry experts. By leveraging curated content, you can maintain a consistent and relevant flow of information to your target audience. This not only satisfies the thirst for timely insights but also proves to be a savvy financial move by minimizing production costs, allowing for a more efficient allocation of resources in the broader spectrum of B2B demand generation.

Content marketing services play a pivotal role in this endeavor. They not only facilitate the integration of licensed content but also offer expertise in optimizing its impact. The strategic use of these services ensures that curated content aligns seamlessly with the overarching B2B digital marketing strategy. In essence, the synergy between fast and cost-effective content integration, bolstered by licensed content and guided by content marketing services, becomes a key driver in propelling the efficiency and success of B2B demand generation efforts.

3. Craft a Balanced Thought Leadership Strategy

The role of thought leadership in shaping a compelling narrative and fostering trust cannot be overstated. A proactive thought leadership strategy stands as a cornerstone in the pursuit of generating demand. While it may not be the generator of B2B leads, it does serve as a vehicle to establish authority within the industry, elevating your brand awareness, positioning your business as a key player and trusted advisor. However, the landscape in 2024 demands a nuanced approach—it’s not just about the quantity of thought leadership pieces but the delicate balance achieved through strategic integration. Building a thought leadership strategy that strikes this equilibrium is essential for navigating the evolving dynamics of B2B demand generation successfully.

Strategic integration of thought leadership pieces is intertwined with the broader goal of aligning with the values and preferences of the target audience. This imperative underscores the necessity for content personalization, a pivotal aspect in crafting a distinctive B2B digital marketing strategy. Certain content marketing services specialize in the creation of bespoke pieces that delve into industry pain points while aligning intimately with your brand’s core values. These finely tuned and tailored creations resonate more profoundly with the audience, amplifying the potential for meaningful engagement and, consequently, driving successful B2B demand generation efforts.

Engaging research firms and leveraging their content marketing services becomes a strategic move to gain a topical edge. By delivering sought-after information crucial for decision-making, along with providing unique insights and high-quality research, you not only establish trust with your buyer but also elevate awareness, increase media exposure, and generate leads.

4. Strategic Decision Mapping and Audience Alignment

What can help you define your customer’s decision stage in their journey? Strategic investment in a lead generation program that yields measurable results is essential in a landscape where every dollar counts, emphasizing the efficient allocation crucial for successful B2B demand generation. Identify programs meticulously aligned with your target audience, recognizing the nuanced landscape of your market.

Understanding the customer’s decision stage within their journey is paramount for B2B demand generation. This involves the implementation of a targeted lead generation program rooted in a comprehensive database of buyer personas that align seamlessly with your overarching marketing strategy. By pinpointing the specific stage at which your audience is making decisions, you can tailor your efforts to provide timely and relevant information, optimizing the chances of conversion.

Audience alignment, as a complementary aspect, takes strategic decision-making a step further. It requires a nuanced comprehension of the target market, encompassing factors like demographics, preferences, and pain points. A successful alignment strategy involves crafting content and engagement tactics that resonate with the unique needs of the audience at different stages of their journey. This tailored approach not only boosts relevance but also fosters a deeper connection with the audience. In essence, strategic decision-making and audience alignment become symbiotic forces, driving the success of B2B demand generation efforts by ensuring that every interaction is purposeful and resonant with the evolving needs of the target audience.

5. Seamless Sales-Ready Handoff: Closing the Loop

The transition from marketing to sales marks a crucial juncture in the customer journey, and it’s at this point that many leads encounter challenges. A seamless handoff is essential to ensure the continuity of the conversation initiated online. The use of interactive tools in your marketing toolkit becomes a pivotal strategy in empowering sales teams to seamlessly pick up where online interactions left off. These tools go beyond mere engagement; they serve as facilitators of value-selling conversations by providing valuable insights and equipping sales teams with the necessary resources for meaningful and informed customer interactions.

To determine the right tools for your team, it’s essential to evaluate their compatibility with your objectives. We provide some insights in a recent blog, Evaluating Sales Tools: The Pros and Cons for Sales Enablement Leaders.

As we step into 2024, the landscape of B2B content marketing continues to evolve. By incorporating these five key strategies into your approach, you can adapt to the changing dynamics of the market, enhance lead generation efforts, and foster enduring customer relationships. Stay agile, stay informed, and let your content lead the way to B2B success in the years to come.

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The demand for GenAI is higher than we have seen with any emerging tech because it is widely recognized to impact market opportunities, competitive dynamics, and long-term strategic plans in ways we haven’t seen before.

GenAI triggers a new leg of the digital journey, one IDC refers to as AI Everywhere. In this next leg of the journey, business leaders will need to adjust their strategy, invest in new technologies, and cultivate new skills. As leaders prepare their organizations for AI Everywhere, they face the following critical decisions.

Strategy and Roadmaps

About half of organizations have an AI roadmap in place and are expected to update it to incorporate the new GenAI use cases; the rest will need to develop a roadmap with Gen AI use cases at the heart of it.  

GenAI has compelling promise for both productivity gains and revenue growth. IDC predicts $1T in productivity gains by 2026 for enterprises who leverage GenAI and automation technologies and a doubling of revenue growth rates for those who use GenAI to co-develop digital products and services. 

According to our global C-Suite survey, we believe organizations will prioritize productivity use cases for the next 18-24 months then revenue growth use cases in 3-5 years.

Industry Disruption

There’s no doubt GenAI has made an impact — 37% of all IT leaders worldwide believe GenAI has already disrupted their business (19%) or will significantly do so in the next 18 months (18%), according to our Global GenAI survey. Life sciences, healthcare, professional services, and media/entertainment are the industries that expect to be disrupted in the next 18 months. In life sciences and healthcare, GenAI is being used to digitize biology to reduce the time and costs to bring new drugs to market. In the media and entertainment industry, GenAI will allow broadcasters to deliver transformative viewing experiences that keep audiences engaged and entertained. And GenAI will allow IT service firms to reduce delivery costs and time, with 40% of services engagements including GenAI-enabled delivery by 2025, according to our predictions.

Tech Roadmaps

Unlike early-stage technology markets, where most organizations wait for the technology to mature, we are seeing a high percentage of organizations planning to invest early on because they recognize the competitive advantage GenAI can bring to their business. However, as tech suppliers evolve their roadmaps for GenAI, tech buyers are struggling to understand when these capabilities will be commercially available.

Enterprises are asking, “When will GenAI Security and Governance be built into the technology?”. We expect 70% of cloud and software platform providers will bundle GenAI safety and governance packages with their primary services by 2026.

They are also asking, “To what extent will cloud providers enable GenAI use cases?” We believe the answer is, “A large extent,” as cloud providers make significant investments in foundation models, AI platforms, and high-performance infrastructure. By 2025, we expect 70% of enterprises will have formed strategic ties with them for GenAI.

And in a world of distributed data, enterprise are already thinking about latency issues and when they can run LLMs on clients. We know PC OEMs, operating system vendors, and silicon providers are eager to bring inferencing capabilities down from the cloud to the client and predict that 80% of new PCs shipped for commercial use will include AI-specific silicon designed to run LLMs locally by 2027.

Maintaining Trusted Enterprise Status

Over the past several years, enterprises have worked hard to be a trusted digital business. As AI is heavily used, enterprises will need to navigate new dimensions of trust as they contend with GenAI risks around data training sets, hallucinations, security exposures and frauds. One of the biggest question enterprises are asking is, “How do we govern AI?”. To address their questions, we have developed predictions about how organizations will govern.

Educate: We believe understanding AI will be the responsibility of employees and 60% of large enterprises will mandate formal data literacy and responsible AI training to mitigate new risks created by the pervasive use of GenAI by the end of 2025.

Extend: Because GenAI has the potential to magnify existing risks around data privacy laws that govern how sensitive data is collected, used, shared, and stored, 80% of large organizations will extend their Data Loss Prevention (DLP) deployments to GenAI environments to prevent privacy violations and data breaches.

Guide: Review boards will be a critical element of the governance and by 2025, 75% G2000 companies will have implemented review boards for management oversight of ethical and responsible AI use.

Monitor: Once these oversight boards are in place, 40% of organizations will utilize AI-enabled risk and compliance solutions to continuously monitor data in real-time to predict non-compliance internally or from 3rd-party associations.

Transparency:  We expect to see LLM transparency statements become the norm as over 30% of organizations that leverage sophisticated AI to produce their products or services will disclose the sources of data used to train the AI models utilized by 2026.

Funding GenAI

The demand for GenAI is high and we are forecasting that organizations will spend $16B on Gen AI in 2023, growing to $143B by 2027. But this spending will be largely dependent on the answers the IT industry provides to the questions outlined above.

If the price for GenAI capabilities is too high, enterprises will wait until the price comes down.
If the roadmaps are slow to address current tech challenges, enterprises will wait until they are in place.
If trusted enterprise status cannot be maintained, enterprises will delay investments until it can be.

AI Everywhere

Rapid adoption is moving AI from an emerging software segment to a critical technology at the center of a platform transition and a new phase of computing – AI Everywhere. GenAI’s potential for innovation is comparable to the introduction of the internet and the potential is limitless. GenAI is here. Are you ready?

To learn more about AI Everywhere and what customers need now, view our GenAI resources website here.

In the last few years, we’ve seen a flood of new industry cloud announcements and launches from major cloud service providers (CSPs), enterprise software vendors, global system integrators, and professional services firms. Many vertical SaaS and PaaS solutions are also positioned as industry clouds in the financial services, insurance, manufacturing, retail, energy, and other industries. The IDC Industry Clouds Directory, which we’ve published for several years, today has over 320 listings in 12 industries, and those are just the industry clouds we know about!

It is easy to see why the popularity of industry clouds exploded since the major cloud and software vendors entered the market. These vertically integrated solutions offer capabilities that give organizations a more direct path to cloud, providing built-in compliance with industry-specific regulations for security, privacy, and reporting, among other advantages. Just having these industry standards pre-configured and regularly updated can save organizations a tremendous amount of custom work and costs. And industry cloud vendors go well beyond these basics, usually providing industry-specific tools, workflows, data models, connectors, and other services that give users the opportunity to leverage the latest innovation accelerators in their industry.

If your organization is considering the adoption of one or more industry clouds, consider the tips below to optimize your investment. Our advice is based on over a decade of IDC research covering industry clouds, solutions, and technology verticalization strategies and many conversations with both buyers and vendors of industry clouds.

Go at your own pace. With their promises of a complete and integrated solution for your industry-specific needs, industry clouds seem to represent a massive new system that requires a drastic overhaul of how you currently do your work. But in fact, industry clouds are built with flexibility and modularity in mind that enables organizations to adopt as many or as few modules as they need at a time. If your business already uses cloud services, enterprise software systems, or professional services solutions, adding industry clouds from the same vendors or their partner ecosystem could be a gradual and streamlined process, using a plug-and-play approach.
Don’t worry about vendor lock-in. Thanks to the recent influx of new offerings, there’s no shortage of industry clouds to choose from, especially in highly regulated industries.  It makes sense to start by evaluating industry cloud solutions from your current vendors – after all, they should work out of the box, and time to value is one of the six pillars of industry clouds. Other advantages of working with your current provider(s) include the consumption convenience of having it count towards your negotiated cloud spend or qualify you for other discounts. Best of all, having to be “locked in” with a vendor as a trade-off for some of these benefits no longer holds true. Most vendors today design their industry clouds with interoperability in mind, building them with open architectures to ensure free data flows and collaboration. If the best-fit solution for your needs is offered by a provider other than your own, it is likely that you are only an API away from being able to integrate it into your own industry cloud platform.
Collaborate closely with your industry ecosystem. Industry clouds enable organizations to supercharge their industry partnerships. This capability is more important than ever today, when sustainability reporting, supply chain interruptions, and increasing regulations require greater data transparency and operational agility across a company’s ecosystem. Using industry clouds to collaborate with your industry ecosystem promotes an open yet secure sharing of data, applications, operations, and expertise across organizations, which in turn can enhance decision-making, increase innovation, and ease skill shortages and supply chain challenges, among other benefits.
Use industry cloud platforms to stay competitive. While industry clouds give you a head start by providing specialized security, compliance, data models, and other tools to meet common industry challenges, they also provide opportunities to add your own differentiators to the mix. That can mean adding new generative AI capabilities that are trained and grounded in your own data or using low-code/no-code functionality to optimize and automate workflows, for example. With the platform approach used by many industry clouds today, adding such innovations becomes relatively easy (if your data environment is ready). This extensibility of industry cloud platforms enables companies to stay agile and competitive, keeping pace with the latest technology developments. Moreover, companies themselves (or with their professional services partners) can build new industry capabilities or integrate AI models grounded in the company’s own data, further differentiating and evolving their operations.
Prepare your organization to leverage the full potential of industry clouds. The platform-based and collaboration-centered approach used by most industry clouds may be new to many users. By providing early and continuous communications about the project and training and support for the new tools, you can help lower the barriers to adoption within the organization. In addition to preparing the company data assets, it is equally important to ensure that the company’s data governance and data sharing policies and processes are updated and communicated clearly to internal users and (external) partners. These preparations will help ensure that the industry cloud becomes your intelligent orchestration platform – the set of applications and technologies that support getting the right data to the right place at the right time. Technology can enable data security, compliance, and IP protection, as well as improve collaboration and automation, but only if users know how to use it to its full potential and company data governance policies are consistently implemented.

The adoption of industry clouds continues as enterprises across all industries see faster time-to-value in the cloud, improved industry compliance, more effective data models and AI/ML tools, convenient cloud consumption options, and better collaboration with partners. Companies in the highly regulated industries were some of the first to adopt industry clouds but today, organizations in most major industries are actively deploying or planning their adoption. More importantly, there are plenty of options on the market for them to choose from.

To find out how your industry peers are leveraging this new cloud model or learn more about the industry clouds available for your vertical, keep current with the research in IDC’s Industry Clouds, Solutions, and Technology Verticalization Strategies service.