IDC Research Types
Analyst
Analyst Profile
Provides complete background information on an IDC analyst. Each profile provides a biography, a notable quotation, a frequently asked question relevant to the particular analyst's focus, and a list of research authored by that analyst.
Team Profile
Lists the analyst members of a topical team. Outlines general areas of coverage and any specialties.
Briefs
Flash
Provides rapid IDC insight and analysis about a significant industry event or conference, merger or acquisition, product announcement, or other fast-breaking news affecting the IT market.
Forecast Update
Provides a short, quick look at an updated forecast and the changed assumptions behind the update. It updates a market forecast published in the same calendar year, identifies changed and key forecast assumptions, and highlights actions for participants to consider in light of the changes.
IDC Insight
Provides coverage and analysis of an industry event, new product or service, or a company announcement or development.
Update
Provides brief overview coverage of what is happening in a market.
Vendor Profiles
Provides a concise, hard-hitting profile of an emerging vendor. A profile will highlight new players and technologies and the potential paradigm shifts or disruptions a vendor represents.
Daily Graphics
Daily Graphic
Illustrates IDC's keen analysis of major market trends in downloadable PowerPoints. Available as a free download the day it appears, an IDC Daily Graphic provides valuable material for speeches and strategic planning.
Event Proceedings
Event Proceeding
Provides published slides, audio, and other materials from IDC and Insights Web conferences, briefings, forums, or other events.
Events
Conference
Delivers dependable, relevant, and high-impact data and insight to help organizations make sound business and technology decisions. eBusiness executives, IT professionals, IT suppliers, and services suppliers benefit from the strategic insight and networking opportunities IDC conferences offer. Generally, all presentation slides are available online, and for most conferences, streaming audio of key discussions is available as well.
Web Conference
Focuses on significant trends and paradigm shifts. Each Web conference will provide attendees with leading-edge market information that will enable them to make smart business decisions. For those unable to attend in person or those wishing to review the content presented, these synchronized multimedia presentations are available online.
IDC DecisionScapes
IDC FutureScape
Serves as a framework for IT/tech professionals' IT strategy and planning for the next one to three years. It lists IDC's top 10 worldwide technology trends for the coming one to three years in a given research area and includes related drivers, projected IT/business strategy impact, and guidance.
IDC MarketScape
Helps IT/tech professionals develop a short list of suitable suppliers when selecting a vendor. Provides an unbiased assessment of tech suppliers in terms of offerings, strategy, capabilities, and other important factors in a given technology area.
IDC MaturityScape
Describes five stages of "maturity" or capability for a particular technology area, helps IT/tech professionals understand where their organizations fit within those stages, and provides guidance on key components for planning successful improvements to a tech initiative.
IDC MaturityScape Benchmark
Helps IT/tech professionals to benchmark their maturity against peers, develop a business case for a tech initiative, and build consensus about where critical IT investments should be made. Presents quantitative research results that show the market distribution for a given tech initiative across the five stages of maturity presented in the related IDC MaturityScape. Shows the results and components of particularly successful initiatives.
IDC PeerScape
Gives IT/tech professionals insight into best practices (and practices to avoid) by providing specific use case examples implemented by peers. Identifies practices that have the most impact on the success of a tech or business initiative, and provides actionable guidance for each practice.
IDC PlanScape
Helps IT/tech professionals to justify and plan a business and/or technology investment or opportunity by exploring why, what, who, and how (these are also the main section headings). Presents key players, critical success factors, risks, and actions to consider for a designated technology and/or business management area.
IDC TechScape
Helps IT/tech professionals with developing IT strategic plans and evaluating emerging technologies in terms of their risk to the business. Shows the adoption curve and risk levels over time for a specific emerging technology. Sorts technologies into three "adoption model" categories (transformational, incremental, opportunistic) to help tech leaders determine the potential impact for their organization.
IDC Links
IDC Link
Provides timely context and insight around important market trends and events in a short opinion piece. IDC Links provide IDC's point of view on:
- Financial announcements
- Product announcements
- Mergers and acquisitions or divestitures
- Events
- Response to news
Insights-only Research
Best Practices
Correlates the use of specific practices and superior performance as indicated by an analysis of the benchmarking database. Highlights any significant differences between industries. Conclusions provide a set of process priorities for improving a business case and advice on how to overcome change management issues.
Business Strategy
Helps buyers to assess their business strategies and/or associated business processes, especially as they relate to the use of technology.
Methods and Practices
Provides a step-by-step description of a method or methods that can be applied. As appropriate, the report may compare the benefits and drawbacks of several methods.
Perspective
Presents an article written by an Insights analyst on a topic of special interest to a target audience. This information has generally already appeared in an industry publication and is repackaged for display on the Insights Web site.
Vendor Assessment
Helps buyers select the right IT supplier. The report helps buyers understand the various providers of a technology by providing analysis on market landscape, vendor profiles, vendor market share, and vendor assessments.
Pivot Tables
Pivot Table
Presents an interactive spreadsheet tool for analyzing trends and activities in a specific market segment. These tables are available only through an annual subscription service.
Predictions
Top 10 Predictions
Provides bold, well-conceived market predictions grounded in solid methodologies, primary research, and analyst experience. Lays out a clear road map to understanding major market opportunities and trends.
Presentations
IDC Presentation
Provides the latest, select CIS forecast data, primary research survey findings, and critical IDC analyst opinion in a succinct, easy-to-digest PowerPoint format.
IDC Survey
Presents a hypothesis about what is happening in the market backed by the results of a demand-side or supply-side survey. The focus is on interpreting and analyzing the survey results and providing a strong point of view along with actionable advice.
IDC Survey Spotlight
Answers a timely question and provides a strong opinion backed by IDC survey data. This is a quick nugget of information that is presented in two concise PowerPoint slides.
Insights Presentation
Provides an easy-to-use format to post on the Web presentations that were previously delivered at public forums (such as conferences and events) or for internal client meetings and client presentations. It may not come as part of a consulting/custom engagement.
Market Analysis Perspective
Delivers a concise current state view of a market and insight into the impact of future trends. Business executives, product managers, and MI/AR professionals can use this information when looking to understand buyers' perspectives and market impacts.
Press Releases
Press Release
Announces significant corporate news, such as key hirings or promotions, performance milestones, event highlights, or speaking engagements.
Product Information
Fact Sheet
Describes a research product. Usually details the major areas of coverage and deliverables, and outlines key questions and competitive market conditions that the research will address. Includes links to all published research for a research product.
Studies
Competitive Analysis
Provides a detailed accounting and review of a vendor's programs, processes, products, service, satisfaction, and/or strategy in a target market. This knowledge helps clients reduce their risk of losing market share or enhance their position over the competition.
Customer Needs and Strategies
Focuses on the important decisions that business and IT professionals make every day.
Industry Developments and Models
Provides a detailed assessment of a specific target market's expansion pattern. This analysis helps clients develop and deploy the right mix of value-add products, programs, or services to support their sales and/or partnering efforts.
Market Analysis
Provides an in-depth examination of the dynamics and future of a single market or a group of related markets. The Market Analysis is where we will typically present our forecasts and assumptions, using a key forecast assumptions table.
Market Forecast
Provides the future of a single market or a group of related markets. It presents a new or updated market forecast, including key drivers and assumptions used in the forecast.
Market Share
Provides data on market size, regional allocations, and platform splits as well as a summary of vendor shares for the most recently completed period (year, quarter).
Special Study
Provides a onetime study produced by a research group that is not published as a deliverable under a subscription service.
Survey
Provides a study and interpretation of the results of a demand- or supply-side survey.
Taxonomy
Highlights and emphasizes how IDC tracks the market while also making it easier for customers to find and identify IDC Taxonomy documents.
Technology Assessment
Provides an analysis of the intricacies of an emerging or established technology or the technologies contained within a specific product.
Vendor Needs and Strategies
Provides an in-depth analysis of a company, a small group of companies, a division of a company focused on a particular market, or a best practice that the company exemplifies.
This IDC study explores how different drivers are collectively impacting technology in the retail industry and offers guidance on actions to consider. Retail organizations are hard pressed in the new digital era to respond to a wide range ...
This IDC Perspective presents an overview of key takeaways from SAP Industry Analyst Base Camp (IABC) in SAP's Newtown Square headquarters, with a focus on SAP's retail vision. During the event, SAP executives presented the company's mission ...
The IDC TechScape provides a list of technologies that retailers should invest in considering their current level of customer experience personalization and their need to differentiate their offerings. The IDC TechScape aims to support retailers:
- Identify ...
This IDC Perspective provides an overview of the key takeaways from the annual European SAS conference for industry analysts, focusing on SAS' retail strategy. Following up on major takeaways from the event held in May 2019, in Dubrovnik, ...
This IDC TechBrief presents the implications of adopting the blockchain technology in retail. The document provides a snapshot of the current status of blockchain adoption in retail as well as its benefits, critical success factors, risks, ...
This IDC Innovators study profiles four notable vendors that leverage conversational commerce to improve customer experience in retail: Avaamo, Botbot.AI, Layer, and Red Ant. IDC Innovators are emerging vendors with revenues of more than ...
This IDC PeerScape presents five practices for delivering effective mobile retail customer experience (CX). Customers are increasingly searching for products online using their mobile phones from notifications that pop up as messages preview, ...
This IDC MarketScape assesses the capabilities and strategies of several key enterprise software vendors in serving the specific needs of retail companies worldwide across industry segments (food and non-food retail). Vendors are evaluated ...
This IDC Web Conference presents a discussion by the IDC Worldwide Retail team on the key predictions that will impact CIOs and IT professionals in the worldwide retail industry over the next one to five years. Senior IT leaders and line-of-business ...
This IDC Retail Insights study evaluates worldwide enterprise consulting and system integration organizations that provide specific capabilities in designing and managing organizational change, implementation, and supporting the evolution ...
This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation highlights our recently published experiential retail digital transformation (DX) use case taxonomy.
As an organizing principle for our digital transformation research, IDC has created a DX use case ...
This IDC study provides the top 10 predictions and underlying drivers that we expect to impact customer experience in 2019 and beyond.
According to Alan Webber, research director, IDC Customer Experience, "Providing a differentiated ...
This IDC study explores how different drivers are collectively impacting technology in the retail industry and offers guidance on actions to consider. Retail organizations are hard pressed in the new digital era to respond to a wide range ...
This IDC MaturityScape includes five stages of retail ecommerce maturity, from the simplest and unstructured Ad Hoc stage to the most mature and systemized Optimized stage. IDC identifies these stages with the succession of the main ecommerce ...
This IDC Perspective provides an overview of the key highlights from the annual European SAS Conference for Industry Analysts, which took place in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on May 30-June1. The three-day event featured updates on SAS' product ...
IDC Innovators are emerging vendors with revenue <$100 million that have demonstrated either a groundbreaking business model or an innovative new technology — or both. This IDC Innovators study profiles three notable vendors that leverage ...
This IDC Perspective summarizes our analysis of Engage 2018, Aptos' third user conference since emerging from Epicor in 2015. When Epicor spun out its retail business as Aptos in 2015, the companies maintained the same private equity investor, ...
This IDC Market Perspective outlines the reasons it is essential for retailers to invest in retail commerce platforms to thrive in the next decade. The challenge for retailers is that a lot of work is still in progress regarding omni-channel ...
This IDC PeerScape document addresses the main challenges that retailers are facing when approaching customers. It also suggests starting points for technology buyers to differentiate customer experience. Lessons learned from companies that ...
This IDC Web Conference explores the new IT capabilities (processes, platforms, talent, governance) needed for digital transformation and the three critical digital strategies many organizations are pursuing: experiential engagement, data ...
Stores remain the largest contributors to retail revenue and, today, the role of the store has changed to an experience and fulfilment center to enable omni-channel profitability. IDC believes that the IoT technologies described in this ...
This IDC study explores the mandate for adaptive retail — platforms, composable microservices-based applications, and integrated AI-enabled, augmented and connected experiences — for consumers in their stream of life and for associates in ...
This IDC Financial Insights study presents the top 10 predictions for the worldwide payment market. Each prediction is shaped by a common set of key drivers that provides a planning tool for technology leaders and their line-of-business ...
This IDC study describes how retailers can leverage cloud technologies, one of the most important foundations for digital transformation (DX) in retail and the most pervasive technology across IDC's retail use case taxonomy (see IDC's ...
This IDC Retail Insights study evaluates worldwide IT vendors that provide a retail omni-channel commerce platform solution for the retail industry by using the IDC MarketScape vendor assessment tool. It analyzes quantitative and qualitative ...