Forrester

In 2024, the healthcare industry faced unprecedented challenges, including the largest cybersecurity attacks ever recorded, historically low Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) scores, and widespread disruptions in relationships between health systems and insurers that drove the spread of medical deserts. As the industry moves into 2025, it faces a complex terrain pitted by the aftermath of these challenges. New hazards will continue to emerge: growing concentration risk, regulatory uncertainties stemming from the overturning of the Chevron doctrine, and the impact of an upcoming election. We expect healthcare organizations (HCOs) to move into protection mode, prioritizing cybersecurity enhancements and investing in generative AI (genAI) technologies to improve customer experiences and manage rising costs. Forrester predicts a challenging yet opportunity-abundant landscape for HCOs in 2025. Here’s a sneak preview of what we predict for healthcare in 2025: Half of the top 10 US health insurers will use AI to bolster member advocacy. Health insurers invested millions of dollars in digital experiences to drive member self-service only to face lower than expected digital adoption rates and mediocre customer ratings. Call volumes to health insurers continue to soar. And now, the long run of dismal customer experience has caught the attention of the US government. In 2025, US health insurers will embrace the human experience to drive down costs and bolster wavering member trust. Health insurers will invest in genAI-powered tools to help contact center employees and care advocates build relationships with members. One-third of leading health insurers will decrease reliance on prior authorizations (PAs). In recent years, payers have employed AI algorithms to process PAs faster and cheaper. But use has turned into overuse, generating increased administrative burden for providers and care delays. PA-fueled bureaucracy and payment delays have led some health systems to exit payers’ networks during a plan year, accelerating the spread of medical deserts. From national legislation to state-specific laws, payers changing their PA process will evaluate the risk holistically, balancing the cost of removing PA requirements and its potential upsides. Three more states will pass legislation to fortify hospital cybersecurity requirements. Cybersecurity attacks, such as the one on Change Healthcare, left devastation in their wake. The newly proposed Health Infrastructure Security and Accountability Act aims to make healthcare cybersecurity controls mandatory and enforceable, but the bill has a long legislative road ahead of it, and the industry is unlikely to meet its standards. New York is leading the charge with new cybersecurity program requirements that bolster security controls and mandate more stringent risk assessments and better incident response. The program also extends protections beyond HIPAA to cover hospitals’ confidential business information. We expect states such as Massachusetts and California to follow suit, and Illinois, Texas, Florida, and Washington may not be far behind due to their recently intensified focus on privacy and cybersecurity laws related to healthcare. HCOs must prepare for three more state-level initiatives that regulate cybersecurity in 2025. Read our full Predictions 2025: Healthcare report to get more detail about each of these predictions and read additional predictions. Set up a Forrester guidance session to discuss these predictions or plan out your 2025 healthcare strategy. If you aren’t yet a client, you can get additional complimentary resources, including e-books and webinars, on the Predictions 2025 hub. source

The injection of multicloud and hybrid cloud networks, business partners adding their own networking solutions, and the addition of the Zero Trust framework into the enterprise businesswide networking fabric has increased the complexity of enterprise networks by two more magnitudes from 10 years ago. In addition, modern networks are now more than just a means of connectivity; networking infrastructures have evolved into strategic assets that drive revenue, enhance customer experiences, and boost employee productivity. In this context, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into IT operations (ITOps) is becoming indispensable. AIOps (AI for IT operations) provides real-time contextualization and insights across the IT estate, ensuring that network infrastructure operates at peak efficiency in serving business needs. This blog explores how AIOps is revolutionizing network management and transforming networks into valuable business assets. This blog is part of a four-part series of blogs. The series delves into the intersection of AIOps with: The future of AI-driven IT operations (Carlos Casanova). DevOps and agile (Devin Dickerson and Andrew Cornwall). Autonomous networks and business-optimized networks (Andre Kindness and Octavio Garcia Granados). Edge, IoT, and OT computing (Michele Pelino). Intelligent Network Management One of the primary benefits of AIOps is its ability to enhance intelligent network management. In today’s complex network environments, optimizing performance and ensuring seamless connectivity in a continuously changing fabric is critical. AIOps provides insights across the various IT domains (e.g., application, security, infrastructure, etc.) that help networking professionals identify areas for improvement, automate routine tasks, and maintain optimal network performance. By leveraging AI-driven analytics, organizations can ensure that their networks are always running smoothly, reducing downtime and improving overall efficiency. Autonomous Networks AIOps is paving the way for the creation of autonomous networks that didn’t materialize during the era of software-defined networking or intent-based networking. These initiatives claimed to create self-managing, self-healing networks that could adapt to changing conditions and demands with minimal human intervention, except a crucial element was missing: AIOps. AIOps highlights areas where automation can be implemented, allowing networks to respond dynamically to issues and changes in the environment. This capability not only reduces the burden on IT staff but also ensures that networks remain resilient and reliable, even in the face of unexpected challenges, by applying known corrective actions or intelligently escalating issues to the right subject-matter expert following the AI “human in the loop” approach. Proactive Issue Resolution Proactive issue resolution is another significant advantage of AIOps. By analyzing vast amounts of data in real time, AIOps can help enterprises move beyond anomaly detection and pattern-based reactive response to better predict and resolve network issues before they impact users. This proactive approach ensures high availability and reliability of network services, which is crucial for maintaining business continuity. By addressing potential problems before they escalate, organizations can avoid costly downtime and ensure a seamless user experience. Embedding Zero Trust Into The Network Zero Trust is a security model that requires strict verification for every user and device attempting to access network resources. AIOps plays a crucial role in embedding Zero Trust principles into the network. By detecting and mitigating threats in real time, AIOps helps protect against cyberattacks and ensures compliance with industry standards. This proactive security approach is essential for safeguarding sensitive data and maintaining the integrity of the network, creating a shim layer between networking operations and security operations/detection/response processes. Business-Optimized Networks AIOps also enables the optimization of network components and subsystems to align with business goals and strategies. By providing actionable insights at the business application layer, AIOps helps organizations make informed decisions that enhance network performance and support business objectives. Whether it’s improving customer experiences, increasing revenue, or boosting employee productivity, AIOps ensures that the network infrastructure is a strategic asset that drives business success. Intelligent Connectivity Requires AI-Infused IT Operations The integration of AIOps into enterprise networks will transform the way organizations manage and optimize their IT operations. By providing real-time insights, enabling autonomous networks, and embedding Zero Trust principles, AIOps is revolutionizing network management and turning networks into valuable business assets. As digital businesses continue to evolve, the role of AIOps will only become more critical, ensuring that networks remain efficient, reliable, and aligned with business goals. Embracing AIOps is not just a technological upgrade; it’s a strategic imperative for any organization looking to thrive in the digital age. Starting in January of 2025, for Forrester clients, we’ll offer a series of webinars that align with this series of blogs. Be sure to mark these dates in your calendar for the upcoming webinars. Follow the analysts below for notification when the registration links are available.   Be sure to check out the other blogs in this series: source

Emily Pfeiffer researches B2C commerce solutions, commerce/site search, and order management systems. Lauren Cevallos researches point-of-service solutions, retail planning systems, and other store technology. We hear software vendors across our research areas saying that they offer — or are — or support — “unified commerce.” And when we ask them what they mean by that, we get a variety of answers. And if you walk around the expo floor at industry events, you’ll see booth after booth that says “unified commerce.” Look closely, and you’ll realize that you’re looking at vendors across many different categories of commerce technology and maybe even agencies that don’t have software, all saying that they do unified commerce. TL;DR: We are hosting a webinar for Forrester clients on November 19. If you’re a Forrester client, please join us! We will dig in on how the term “unified commerce” is used in the commerce tech market. We’ll also provide clarity on what types of unification matter and how to cut through the marketing speak to get to the value you need. We asked many vendors what “unified commerce” means to them. We get very different answers: Some said it’s about unifying (or consolidating) technical functions within one platform. Others talked about integrating tech across platforms. A few simply described the functionality that their company offers. Lately, a common answer is even less clear: “Unified commerce is about selling and interacting with customers, seamlessly, across channels including digital and physical.” Sound familiar? Yes — it’s basically just “omnichannel” ( … which is already a term). Is unified commerce just a new term for an existing concept — or, confusingly, many existing ones? The biggest reason we see this term as problematic is because so many vendors use it, and they all mean something different when they talk about what they’re unifying. We hear it from order management systems, point-of-service solutions, payment providers … and most of the time when a vendor uses the term, it doesn’t even offer a commerce solution. Rather, it provides systems that are a part of the great commerce tech ecosystem (no matter how unified it may be). So if you’re struggling to understand what it is that vendors are helping you unify, and how and why you’d want “unified commerce,” we’re here to help you understand. So “unified commerce” is not a thing. However … Digital businesses benefit from unification in their commerce strategies and tech. To be clear, there is value in unification. We will explain where we see benefits in unification within commerce tech, despite the numerous interpretations of the term unified commerce. Join us on November 19 for a live webinar on the topic of unified commerce and ask your questions live! And if you can’t join that day, please listen to the playback. We’re also happy to discuss this with you as a Forrester client via a guidance session or inquiry. source

Digital business is still growing in importance. Forrester’s Digital Business Strategy Survey, 2024, highlights that the percentage of organizations stating that their digital strategy and/or initiatives have a major impact on their growth, or are the primary driver of their growth, has grown from 55% to 61% between 2023 and 2024. Of all digital initiatives, digital product and service innovation is the top priority, and a single vision of the future to create a strategy and roadmap is seen as critical when it comes to developing and implementing a successful digital strategy. This is where the digital team comes in. Digital teams are primarily tasked with designing, delivering, and managing digital products or services, launching digital innovations, and developing the digital roadmap. The CTO, CIO, and CDO are all closely involved in setting the digital strategy, but the chief digital officer is often responsible for executing the digital strategy. How do you, as a digital business leader, navigate these dynamics and build a high-performing digital team? You need to: Establish the skills priorities and skills gaps that your organization has. Not all digital skills are relevant for your organization’s strategy and objectives. Our Digital Competency Map helps you assess your key skills gaps by taking into account your existing and required skills. It does so across six competencies: experience design, agile development and operations, emerging technologies, data science, change management, and product management. Pick the right strategy to plug any skills gaps. Many organizations face three main talent challenges: The digital skills among their workforce are scarce, digital skills are constantly evolving, and there are few external candidates with the right digital skills (or the candidates are too expensive or in the wrong location). The four options to overcome digital skills gaps are to recruit talent externally, retrain existing employees, work with external service providers that have the required talent, and/or embrace automation. Become and remain an attractive employer to acquire and retain digital talent. To advance your digital maturity, you need to focus on recruiting and retaining your own digital talent. Despite the economic uncertainties in many economies, employees with scarce skills are still in high demand. The employer brand and the employee value proposition (EVP) both play a pivotal role in your talent strategy and must be aligned. Both influence a candidate’s decision to join — and stay — with an organization. Moreover, EVP and employer brand directly affect employee engagement, a prerequisite for driving better customer experiences. Choose the most appropriate digital org model that fits your needs. Organizations undergoing digital transformation are looking for org structures and models that deliver shorter time to value, better business alignment, and greater customer obsession. As a result, more organizations are exploring cross-functional and platform org models to break down silos and align teams to either channels, customer journeys, or products. In these more dynamic org structures, clear accountabilities and responsibilities must be clearly outlined. Forrester Decisions for Digital Business & Strategy empowers digital leaders to succeed in their vision and mission. Within this service, the research, tools, and frameworks in the Grow The Digital Team priority help digital business leaders build a high-performing digital team. Read the various reports and reach out to us to tackle your digital-team-building initiative with discipline and precision. If you’re thinking about building and strengthening your digital team — and are a Forrester client — you can download the vision report here: Lead A High-Performing Digital Team. And if you’d like to discuss this topic further, please reach out through an inquiry or guidance session. source

AI and, most recently, generative AI (genAI) have uncovered the true power of automating tasks that previously were tedious to complete or difficult to improve the efficiency of the work within a singular domain of the business. But much more importantly, genAI has also started to drive new levels of business value as it cuts across different domains of business operations. In fact, genAI by design is a silo breaker! But how will AI and genAI disrupt the enterprise architecture discipline? What are the potential benefits and challenges for that discipline, and should enterprise architecture leaders be concerned about their role? Let’s take a closer look at these questions. Understanding How AI And GenAI Will Impact The Enterprise Architecture Discipline As an enterprise architecture leader using genAI, you want the technology to provide relevant information and answers that bring real value to your request, not just some kind of worthless hallucinations or coherent nonsense. Enterprise architecture management suites (EAMSes) have started to overcome this problem with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology, implying that research and analysis stays and remains inside the enterprise in a fully protected format, with knowledgeable data. And while enterprise architects may dream of the future, they must never be subject to hallucinations for their forecasts. During the research for my upcoming Forrester Wave™ evaluation on EAMSes (to be published later this year), I had the opportunity to interview many EA tool vendors and ask them how they have incorporated AI. I would like to thank ABACUS, Adaptive, Ardoq, Bizzdesign, Capsifi, Essential Cloud, SAP LeanIX, MEGA International, North Highland, SAMU, and Sparx Systems for letting me know how AI and genAI are getting more and more embedded in their EAMSes. Here is the good news: AI and genAI are not going to replace enterprise architects! On the contrary, these technologies will augment them. The ultimate goal for enterprise architects using EAMSes will be the design of digital twins of their various business operations, which in turn will allow them to create various “what if” scenarios for their transformation options. This will empower enterprise architecture leaders to decide on the best possible transformation roadmaps. My new report, Disrupt Your Enterprise Architecture Practices With AI And GenAI, describes how this game-changer phenomenon will make enterprise architecture not just more efficient but will also enable enterprise architecture leaders to act as trusted advisors to their CEOs going forward. If you’re a Forrester client and you’re interested in working on the value proposition for your architecture group, please request a guidance session or inquiry with me to discuss in detail. source

In B2B organizations, process is the unsung hero in delivering strategic initiatives and business outcomes, yet processes are often overlooked and poorly managed, leading to struggles with process design, implementation, adoption, and optimization. Processes often develop organically within functional or subfunctional silos — without much forethought — and become a negative experience for all participants. In mature organizations, operations and process leaders are responsible for process optimization projects and change management efforts across go-to-market teams to ensure streamlined, cross-functional processes. We interviewed 20 clients who provided thoughtful and actionable feedback for how their go-to-market operations teams mitigate six red flags to achieve operational excellence across B2B teams. The full report provides a comprehensive analysis of the six red flags, including detailed breakdowns, numerous warning signs to look out for, their meanings, and tactical strategies to mitigate their impact. Identify these warning signs in your organization’s processes and turn those red flags green before it’s too late. 1. Red Flag: Processes Inefficiently Designed And Documented Processes are often nonexistent, unclear, inadequate, or fail to serve their purpose. Warning signs: Complex and overengineered Too vague or too detailed   2. Red Flag: Processes Undergoing Constant Change Frequent changes to processes beget an unstable work environment. Warning signs:   3. Red Flag: Processes Lacking Clear Roles, Expectations, And Accountability Chaos ensues when no one knows who owns the process, who should be involved, or what everyone is supposed to do. Warning signs:   4. Red Flag: Processes Missing End-To-End Workflows By Participant Role Murky handoffs within and between B2B processes reveal deeper issues within the organization’s structure and communication. Warning signs: Not aligned with company goals and objectives Inability to determine where issues lie   5. Red Flag: Processes Deprived Of Adequate Compliance B2B organizations face significant challenges when people don’t adhere to processes. Warning signs: Rogue duplicative processes   6. Red Flag: Processes Not Being Measured Without success metrics, organizations can’t determine whether they’re on the right track or if adjustments are needed. Warning signs: Inconsistent quantifiable metrics   If some of these red flags feel inevitable, you are not alone. Many B2B organizations struggle with their processes, but operational excellence and improved business outcomes can be achieved when the go-to-market operations team takes the lead in designing, documenting, and optimizing processes. The first step is to raise the alarm bells when you see a warning sign. Identify any gaps before they grow into a true red flag. The final step is mitigation. Find the answers in the full report, which dives deeper into what each red flag really means for your organization along with actionable insights for prevention. (Riley McDonnell, research associate, contributed to this post.) source

The AI revolution continues to grow at an unprecedented pace, even amidst some skepticism this year of the business value it delivers. The allure of quick wins and immediate ROI from AI implementations has led many to overlook the necessity of a comprehensive, long-term business strategy and effective data management practices. But according to Forrester’s State Of AI Survey, 2024, two-thirds of the respondents believe that their organizations would require less than 50% return on investments to consider their AI investments successful, which points to a reality check. Enterprises must build a data and AI strategy that not only addresses business impact and ROI but also focuses on AI principles, governance, talent, operations, and activation of the appropriate use cases. The journey of AI leaders in 2025 will be dominated by the the critical realization that there are no shortcuts to AI successm and it will be imperative to prepare for the grind. This year’s AI Predictions report highlights the importance of marrying data and AI strategies, bringing business and technical expertise together, and leveraging partners for excellence. Here are three of our 2025 AI predictions: Most enterprises fixated on AI ROI will scale back prematurely. Amidst the enthusiasm for AI-driven transformation, a significant reset is looming. The expectation for immediate returns on AI investments will see many enterprises scaling back their efforts sooner than they should. This retreat risks stifling long-term growth and innovation as leaders realize that the ROI from AI will unfold over a more extended period than initially anticipated. To avoid this, AI leaders need differentiating use cases and a solid strategy that aligns with business aspirations and balances immediate gains with sustained ROI. This will fuel a virtuous cycle of reinvestment from early successes into future AI projects. Forty percent of highly regulated enterprises will combine data and AI governance. The complexity of AI governance, already intense due to rapid technological innovation and the absence of universal templates, standards, or certifications, is set to increase further. With stringent AI regulations coming into force, especially the EU AI Act in February 2025, along with a growing demand for transparent AI operations, highly regulated enterprises will unify their data and AI governance frameworks. This shift and convergence is required for more than just compliance — it represents a fundamental move toward a more integrated, transparent, accountable, and ethically responsible approach to AI. Three out of four firms that build aspirational agentic architectures on their own will fail. The next big piece of emerging tech in the world of AI is agentic AI, but enterprises with ambitions to build advanced agentic architectures themselves will meet significant hurdles. The challenge is that these architectures are convoluted, requiring diverse and multiple models, sophisticated retrieval-augmented generation stacks, advanced data architectures, and niche expertise. Mature companies will recognize these limitations and opt to collaborate with AI service providers and systems integrators, leveraging their expertise to build cutting-edge agentic solutions. Forrester clients can read our full Predictions 2025: Artificial Intelligence report to get more detail about each of these predictions, plus two more bonus predictions on the chief data officer’s evolving role and shift toward predictive AI. Set up a Forrester guidance session to discuss these predictions with myself and key contributors of this report to plan out your 2025 AI strategy that will set your organization up for success. If you aren’t yet a client, you can download our complimentary Predictions guide, which covers our top predictions for 2025 across technology and security. Get additional complimentary resources, including webinars, on the Predictions 2025 hub. source

In a surprising turn of events for enterprise resource planning (ERP) customers globally, as part of its Q3 2024 financial results, ServiceNow announced a new expanded partnership with one of the most popular third-party software support providers, Rimini Street. Both companies are creating a new enterprise software model that will allow existing on-premises ERP systems and other enterprise applications to add new AI innovations using ServiceNow’s AI platform. The new offering will leverage the single architecture, single data model of ServiceNow with Rimini Street’s proven independent third-party software support capabilities to add and enhance customer innovation across several key pillars such as procurement, finance, supply chain, HR, customer service, and IT. This is welcome news to many on-premises ERP and other large enterprise application customers worldwide who have stalled their move to SaaS or vendor-hosted cloud offerings for ERP, SCM, HCM, CRM, and more, as they tend to be multiyear, multimillion-dollar upgrades or transformation programs. Often, not upgrading means no access to new vendor AI innovations. Many such customers are also facing rising support costs from software vendors like SAP and Oracle to their old on-premises footprint. This, along with end-of-support software deadlines, has triggered a move to third-party software support providers such as Rimini Street to significantly save on software support and maintenance costs and prolong the life of their on-premises applications for which they own perpetual licenses. Lack of modernization and an inability to add new AI innovations were often cited as the biggest industry critiques of moving and staying with third-party software support, but Rimini Street has just squashed that concern by partnering with ServiceNow, which is well known for its modern platform enabling workflows, automation, AI, and service management capabilities. Legacy or on-premises customers using Rimini Street can now add a complex layer of AI and automation innovation over these existing systems without having the need to undergo costly and complex upgrades and painstakingly expensive transformation programs. Customers need not wait several years to complete upgrades to access AI innovations offered by software vendors. On-premises customers can access innovation now when it is most needed in these economically uncertain and inflationary conditions. SAP S/4HANA on-premises and ECC on-premises customers will rejoice knowing that they don’t have to wait to complete (or even start, for that matter) their RISE with SAP S/4HANA cloud programs (often considered very expensive in the industry) to leverage Business AI innovations from SAP. Many existing SAP customers have been using Rimini Street for third-party software support due to the rising cost of SAP support over the last two years and to extend the life of their ECC systems and on-premises S/4HANA systems. These customers will now have the ability to innovate right where they are, which puts the power back into the hands of the SAP customers to be able to transform without disruptions. The industry has seen SAP change its RISE with SAP offering over the years, and 2025 and beyond will see further expansion on what is traditionally considered RISE with SAP and Cloud ERP. Both SAP and ServiceNow reported great Q3 2024 financial results. Industry competition is getting stiff between the five enterprise mega vendors — SAP, Oracle, Workday, Salesforce, and ServiceNow — to gain market share and positioning in ERP, HCM, SCM, CRM, ITSM, and more, with only two of them successfully positioning as an end-to-end platform company. The race to enterprise AI is heating up, with Workday and Salesforce announcing a federated data model partnership, Oracle announcing several groundbreaking multicloud partnerships, and SAP upping its game for Business AI. While most of these innovations are in SaaS or vendor-hosted cloud offerings, on-premises customers are often left in the dust! This is precisely why this ServiceNow and Rimini Street partnership offers some reprieve to customers worrying about having no access to AI innovation if they stalled their move to SaaS or cloud platforms. For more insights on the entire third-party software support market, Rimini Street, or this specific announcement, clients can book time with me (inquiry or guidance session). source

With 2025 budget cycles well underway, B2B sales and marketing leaders are braced for another rough go at it. Forrester’s Budget Planning Survey, 2024, found that only 35% of B2B marketing leaders and 33% of B2B sales leaders expect budgetary increases of 5% or higher. This means that, after factoring for inflation, the overwhelming majority of organizations will only be able to support new go-to-market investments by scaling back current areas of investment. For leaders of marketing and sales operations, doggedly tight budgets will require ruthless introspection as you identify areas for savings and pointedly work through how to best redeploy that investment. To make smart choices, we must acknowledge key business challenges likely to weigh on marketing and sales teams in 2025: Processes designed around company needs, not customer value, are taking a toll. Whether it’s systems of measurement that don’t account for customer value or processes that fail to help customers attain it, the ways that B2B organizations allocate their resources often have a negative impact on the customer. An AI explosion is stretching legacy technology and data to a breaking point. A large majority of B2B decision-makers are at minimum exploring the use of AI in go-to-market processes. But applying AI as an accelerator to customer needs that aren’t understood and turbocharging outreach to buyers on the basis of subpar data are recipes for buyer dissatisfaction — signs are that most organizations are not ready. A perpetual break/fix mode is inhibiting meaningful change. Go-to-market operations teams continue to devote more time to duct-taping fatally flawed approaches than designing better ways to work. As long as this goes on, organizational challenges revolving around the application of insights and optimization of revenue-related processes will never be addressed, while operational resources getting overwhelmed by the crisis of the day will continue to be the norm. Given these realities, here are just a few of the investment choices that we believe go-to-market operations teams should start with in 2025: Double down on customer data unification and hygiene. A deeper, more connected understanding of your buyers and customers is crucial. Organizations need to invest in solutions that unify data, support hygiene and enrichment, and perform ID resolution if they’re to gain a fuller view of the customer and optimize value-producing engagement. Squeeze out duplicative capabilities in best-of-breed solutions. B2B revenue tech stacks have grown unwieldy. Sprawling collections of point solutions are absorbing financial resources and adding complexity to customer-facing processes. It’s time for B2B organizations to pare some of those best-in-breed solutions holding great, but underutilized, promises — especially where broad platform providers that are already deployed are presenting “good enough” solutions. Expand deployment of conversation intelligence technologies. According to Forrester’s Buyers’ Journey Survey, 2023, nearly half the purchasing interactions that buyers value are personal, and personal interactions most frequently take the form of conversations between humans. These interactions are rich sources of insights into the needs of buyers and customers. With AI-driven advances promising to unlock meaning from these interactions, investments in conversational intelligence are poised to drive better outcomes for buyers and sellers alike. Quit trying to scale chaos. Go-to-market operations teams frequently fall into the trap of focusing on low-priority operational tasks, random tactical requests, and continuous firefighting. At the heart of this activity lies a series of outdated processes never designed around customer need. Revenue operations leaders must stop investing their time in attempting to mitigate chaos and prioritize one or two high-priority processes for mapping and improvement. Navigating tight budgets shouldn’t mean sacrificing go-to-market excellence. Operations teams can use a series of smart investments, well-placed experiments, and targeted cuts to power your organization’s growth and create lasting customer value. Forrester clients can read more of our recommendations in our Budget Planning Guide 2025: Revenue Operations. Forrester clients who’d like to hear more about these recommendations and what else sales, marketing, and revenue operations teams can do to ensure that their 2025 plans are successful, please join us on November 18 for a client webinar. source

Asset-intensive industries like manufacturing and transportation quickly feel the pain when energy prices rise, raw materials are harder to access, or borrowing money for capital projects becomes more expensive. They were hit by all of those and more in 2024, forcing leaders to focus even more than usual on managing costs and improving efficiency. In the mobility sector, the seemingly inevitable transition from fossil fuels to electrification slowed in many countries, as a combination of declining subsidies, high up-front costs, patchy infrastructure, and looming tariffs made buyers pause. We don’t anticipate any dramatic improvement in the global macroeconomic situation in 2025, but we see plenty of opportunity for leaders across manufacturing and mobility to use technology to adapt to the tricky environment in which they and their customers find themselves. For 2025, we predict that: Over 25% of big last-mile service and delivery fleets in Europe will be electric. It’s hard to miss frequent headlines about a dramatic fall in sales of electric vehicles during 2024, especially in Germany and some other European countries. There’s a lot to unpack about the short- and longer-term trends at play, but this wobble in the car market masks a good news story in the electrification of larger fleets of small vans. One-third of DPD’s last-mile fleet in the UK is fully electric, rising to 90% in cities like London. UK energy company British Gas aims to electrify its entire van fleet in 2025. Amazon operates more than 1,000 electric vans in Germany (and over 15,000 in the US). Across the continent, parcel delivery firms, utility companies, and local governments operating large fleets of small vans over relatively short distances see electrification as an opportunity to manage costs while lowering carbon emissions. Less than 5% of the robots entering factories and warehouses will walk. Investors, analysts, journalists, bloggers, and random sci-fi fans just love geeking out about robots that walk, but the compelling use cases for their legs are less common — or obvious — than most of these individuals believe. ANYbotics and Boston Dynamics offer four-legged robotic dogs for inspection, safety, and mapping use cases; Agility Robotics’ bipedal robots can be seen in some Amazon warehouses; and Boston Dynamics, Figure, and Tesla have all tested their humanoid robots in automotive plants. These robots have a wow factor, but they may not have the best form factor for addressing industry’s dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks. We should all focus more on the task we’re trying to complete and less on how cool the robots look. A major carmaker will make significant cuts to its digital team. The automotive sector is struggling to cope with electrification, fast-moving new entrants to the market, and the rise of the “software-defined vehicle,” which more tightly integrates hardware and software within the car. Established carmakers invested billions of dollars in building digital practices that were meant to help transform 20th-century excellence in physical engineering into 21st-century excellence in digital engineering. On balance, it’s not going particularly well. General Motors announced plans to cut 1,000 employees from its software and services division this year, and its competitors are likely to follow suit. Cars are becoming more connected and more digital, and they’re able to add new features with over-the-air updates. Ecosystems underpin the future of mobility, and today’s carmakers must adapt to a future in which they might not create — or even control — the digital experiences within their cars. Read our full Predictions 2025: Smart Manufacturing And Mobility report to get more detail about each of these predictions, plus two more. Forrester clients can join a webinar on January 8 or set up a Forrester guidance session to discuss these predictions or plan out your 2025 smart manufacturing and mobility strategies. If you aren’t yet a client, you can download one of our complimentary Predictions guides, which cover our top predictions for 2025 across a variety of areas. Get additional complimentary resources, including webinars, on the Predictions 2025 hub. source