Forrester

Let me tell you about my first time using an AI coding assistant. Picture this: I enter a prompt and sit at my desk watching in slack-jawed amazement as my digital partner spins up hundreds of lines of perfectly formatted code faster than I can brew my morning coffee. “Add authentication!” POOF! “Create a data visualization!” WHOOSH! “Fix this bug!” ZING! I felt invincible — like I’d discovered a cheat code for software development. Oh, My Sweet Summer Child Don’t get me wrong — that initial magic is real. Going from zero to a thousand lines of code has never been easier. But as my projects grew more complex, I found myself juggling 15 browser tabs, switching between AI chat and integrated development environment (IDE), and watching my productivity drip away with each context switch. The cognitive load was starting to feel like carrying water in a leaky bucket. It’s worth noting here that at this stage I was just working within a web interface (picture ChatGPT in a website, and you’ve got it). Switching to an IDE-embedded chat window with access to multiple large language models (LLMs) with a drop-down made an enormous difference in both productivity and results. Here’s the thing that took me an embarrassingly long time to remember: Writing code is just one of many pieces of software development. Something about that initial AI coding magic made me temporarily forget everything I knew about proper software development lifecycle principles. I was like a kid with a new superpower, trying to solve every problem by shooting laser beams at it. The first breakthrough came when I stopped treating AI as just a code generator and started using it as a partner in the entire development process. I built a workflow that leveraged LLMs to help create design documents, sprint plans, and architecture specifications. For a while, it was perfect — all the magic of AI assistance but with proper structure and planning. All Honeymoons Must End I’d gotten clever with my architecture. Microservices everywhere! Clean separations! But as I wrapped up my third sprint, architectural drift had set in. A little compromise here, a tiny violation of domain boundaries there … death by a thousand tiny, pragmatic decisions. No problem, I thought. We can just refactor everything now! Just me and my AI pair programmer, cleaning house and restoring order. At first, it was glorious. We were moving at lightning speed, reorganizing code across more than a dozen files simultaneously. Then, without any worry or trepidation, I tried to start the FastAPI service that I built for my application’s back end. Oh No! Remember that scene in “Jurassic Park” when they realize the raptors have been testing the fences for weaknesses? That’s what my error messages felt like. Each fix spawned two new problems. My test coverage plummeted to barely 50%, and every attempt to improve it just revealed more issues. My AI assistant and I, previously an unstoppable duo, were now like perfect strangers trying to solve a Rubik’s cube in the dark while wearing oven mitts. The humbling irony? The very tools that had made me feel invincible had just helped me dig the deepest development hole I’d experienced in years. I had moved too fast, changed too much, and completely overwhelmed both my own ability to reason about the system and my AI assistant’s capacity to help fix it. Had I forgotten that design validation for adherence, best practices, and patterns should be conducted in every sprint, rather than kicking the can down the road? Apparently, I had! After days of playing whack-a-mole with errors, I had to make a tough call. The project needed a fresh start, this time with sounder design principles from day one. Sometimes, the best way out of a hole is to stop digging and climb out a different way entirely. The lesson? For the uninitiated, AI-assisted development can be like strapping a rocket engine to a bicycle. It can help you move at incredible speeds, but strap a rocket to a bicycle with wobbly wheels, and, well … you can picture how that ends. The fundamentals of software engineering are now more important than ever: clean architecture; careful design; disciplined development practices; thorough testing. These aren’t constraints — they’re the foundations that let us safely use all this newfound power. So embrace the magic of AI-assisted development, but don’t get drunk on the power like I did. Speed means nothing if you’re running in the wrong direction. And maybe, just maybe, think twice before refactoring a dozen files at once — no matter how invincible your AI sidekick makes you feel. After all, the goal isn’t just to write code faster — it’s to build better software faster. Sometimes, you need to learn that lesson the hard way. I know I did. source

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Delivering compelling B2B event content is central to an event’s success, but it’s a high-stakes endeavor. Leaders must build organizational alignment around a key theme that aligns to business objectives. They need to use this theme to craft a narrative that feeds into all aspects of event content. They must coordinate with demanding speakers. Resourcing and budgets are stretched. And all of this happens under the pressure of the unmovable deadline of a live event. Forrester research has identified three key challenges that marketers face when it comes to managing their event content: Measuring content effectiveness. Budgets are under pressure, and marketers need to better measure the impact of their event content, but two-thirds of B2B marketers tell us they find this difficult, and many organizations lack the integrated event infrastructure required for effective content measurement. Offering personalized content. Marketers recognize that attendees want (and now expect) higher levels of personalized event content, but they struggle to deliver this. While AI holds the potential to help here, marketers are reluctant (or unable) to fully exploit its capabilities. Driving post-event engagement. Over half of marketers struggle to create content that nurtures attendees post-event and helps to build “community.” Too often, event teams need to shift focus to the next event and lack the bandwidth or internal support to focus here. Take An Audience-Centric Approach To Create Enduring, Impactful Event Content   To overcome these challenges, marketers must take a more disciplined, process-driven approach to their event content strategy and creation. The Forrester Event Content Lifecycle Framework places the target audience at the center of event content planning. It breaks the event content lifecycle into the four key phases of pre-event content planning, pre-event content production, at-event content delivery, and post-event content value realization. For each of these phases, we examine the objectives, inputs, activities, team, and infrastructure that leaders need to consider. Forrester clients can read the report, Master B2B Event Content Best Practices To Drive Engagement, which goes into each of these phases in more detail, and can also request a guidance session to discuss their own event content strategies! source

B2B companies are delivering personalized experiences to buyers who are deciding whether to make a purchase. But what happens when those buyers sign a contract and finally become customers? You’d think that those companies would personalize postsale customer engagement in equal, if not greater, measure. After all, 61% of B2B revenue comes from existing customers through renewals and expansion. And certainly, customers expect personalized experiences. You’d think … but research from Forrester’s State Of Digital In B2B Marketing, 2023, survey showed that, while 92% of companies use personalization in marketing, only 54% use personalization in customer engagement. Our new report, Personalization Should Pervade The Entire Customer Lifecycle, Not Just The Buying Journey, explains why this is the case and, more importantly, what to do. Start With A Real Plan For Customer Retention And Expansion If you’re ready to improve personalization for your customer base, here’s where to start: Give expansion plans the attention they deserve. B2B companies should have an ideal revenue mix of new business, renewals or repurchases, and expansion through cross-sell and upsell. This mix will differ by strategy, maturity, market, and a host of other variables. If the demand strategy for new logos is crisp and clear while the expansion plan starts and ends with “We need to upsell more,” it’s time to get marketing, sales, customer success, and product aligned on real strategies to help customers attain value and drive customer retention and growth. This clarity helps build the case for more focus, including better personalization, for customers’ postsale experience. Face the need for data unification. Data from digital experience platforms, CRMs, marketing automation platforms, customer success platforms, support platforms, learning management systems, online communities, conversation automation solutions, and other sources must be unified and available. Personalization relies on the ability to gather insights and make them actionable, and those insights arise from a coherent dataset. Pare down technology silos. There’s a reason why vendors of purpose-built technology for customer success platforms and communities are integrating lifecycle management, customer success management, and community experiences while using terms such as “hub” and “cross-channel.” When technology is integrated and the drivers of various parts of the postsale journey work together, everyone reaps the benefits: better customer experience, customer retention, expansion, and the creation of advocates who want to tell others what they’ve accomplished. Technology silos make a cohesive approach more difficult. Personalization can take many forms, including delivering relevant, customized content; driving segmentation; and drawing on persona, role, and behavioral information, all to create great customer interactions. Contact us to take our personalization maturity assessment and pick your next steps in determining a strategy that’s right for your company and for your customers. source

After completing The Forrester Wave™: Knowledge Management Solutions, Q4 2024, I wanted to understand where the market was with the adoption of generative AI in knowledge management (KM) workflows. Vendors use genAI to streamline and accelerate different parts of the agile KM process. While there have been some doubts from reference customers about the early results, many vendors are pouring money into genAI to tackle the repetitive tasks that often bog down KM practices. That said, IT leaders have a bit of work ahead of them to address challenges related to knowledge quality and difficulties in navigating the necessary cultural shifts if they want to capitalize on AI’s full potential in agile KM. The State Of Your Captured Knowledge Matters The success of genAI in KM is contingent on the quality of the captured knowledge. ​High-quality, structured organizational knowledge is essential for accurate and reliable AI outputs. IT leaders must emphasize the need for a supportive culture, well-defined roles and responsibilities, and consistent KM practices to capture the necessary information to help improve decision-making, drive innovation, and enhance workforce agility. Known problems with knowledge include: Quality — inaccurate or deliberately false information Findability — scattered across different platforms, databases, or departments Relevance — no longer up to date ​​​Retention — loss of key staff and poor KM practices Sharing — silos and permissions deny access Six Ways That GenAI Increases Agility In Knowledge Workflows GenAI can significantly enhance agile KM practices by automating and improving various aspects of knowledge workflows.​ In my recently published report, Move Beyond Agile Knowledge Management With Generative AI, I separated the most common use cases for genAI into three categories: what is generally available today, what is still in pilot, and what is in development. These are the top six generally available use cases for genAI in agile KM workflows: Knowledge gaps and sentiment analysis Enterprise retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) search Improving knowledge with generated summaries and suggested improvements Applying a style guide and some data scrubbing Cocreation of knowledge with subject-matter expert (SME) via a generated first draft Understanding the context of questions from end users with conversational AI​   While new features may soon be available in your KM platform, reference customers should head into this new way of working with a bit of caution. Be ready to support the financial decisions with a solid ROI that illustrates improved productivity, and work closely with your vendor or service provider to get the system ready to support a production environment. Some vendors will help you clean up your knowledge stores before you implement a new solution to help generate a higher level of accuracy. A Change Of Perspective Is Required ​IT leaders need to address the cultural and managerial changes that are needed. To capitalize on genAI advancements, changes are required in our traditional working methods — meaning that our knowledge workers must embrace these changes as a new way of doing business: From static to dynamic. AI is revolutionizing knowledge capacity building by automating and enhancing knowledge practices. IT leaders must integrate knowledge creation, improvement, and sharing into core business processes. Capturing and updating knowledge needs to be everyone’s responsibility. From a single source of truth to a moment of truth. Instead of building a single source of truth, IT leaders should focus on making decisions at a moment of truth, accessing comprehensive information from multiple sources in real time. From capture to cocreation. IT leaders should shift from capturing knowledge from SMEs to cocreating knowledge with technology. ​AI acts as a cognitive partner, speeding up analysis and generating new insights. From finding to discovery. IT leaders should shift from finding information to discovering new ideas and innovations, enabling a creative state where AI suggests novel solutions and optimizes processes. From closed silos to open to everyone. IT leaders should mentor staff to move from closed knowledge-sharing silos to open knowledge accessible to everyone, improving valuable knowledge-sharing across teams. From the search for answers to the power of the next question. IT leaders must realize that knowledge is not just about searching for answers; knowledge empowers employees to ask the next question, develop critical thinking skills, and uncover more profound insights.   By embracing these shifts, organizations can leverage genAI to create a more dynamic, innovative, and collaborative KM ecosystem, ultimately enhancing decision-making, productivity, and business performance. Let’s Connect Have questions? That’s fantastic. Let’s connect and continue the conversation! Please reach out to me through social media or request a guidance session. Follow my blogs and research at Forrester.com. source

Welcome to the 2025 Customer Obsession Awards! Every year, Forrester recognizes leading organizations and executives who put customers at the center of everything — their leadership, strategy, and operations — and, in the process, accelerate growth, customer loyalty, and employee engagement. This year, we are recognizing those who understand that customer engagement knows no bounds. They use visionary strategies that seamlessly blend marketing, customer experience (CX), and digital business models into a meticulously crafted journey for their customers that delivers results. We know that customer obsession isn’t easy. That’s why we want to celebrate companies’ and leaders’ hard work and dedication around the world. Regional winners will be announced at CX Summit EMEA (June 2–4, 2025), CX Summit North America (June 23–26, 2025), and CX Summit APAC (August 18, 2025). Nominate Your Company And Leaders For Forrester’s 2025 Customer Obsession Awards We’re seeking nominations in two categories: Customer-Obsessed Enterprise. This award celebrates an organization with sharp and sustained customer focus in their product, service, and brand decisions, strategies, and operations. The winning organization encourages deep collaboration across their entire enterprise to ensure that customer obsession aligns with the brand promise and results in quantifiably better outcomes for customers, employees, and the business. Nominations are open to all organizations in North America, Asia Pacific, and EMEA with at least 1,000 employees, focusing on the consumer-facing part of the business. Customer-Obsessed Leadership. This award will recognize a senior executive who puts the customer at the center of every decision and models behaviors that balance both customer and business needs. The winning executive creates an environment where everyone is empowered and inspired to create quantifiably better outcomes for customers, employees, and the business with amazing products, experiences, and service. Nominations for the Customer-Obsessed Leadership Award are open to senior leaders in organizations across industries that are headquartered in North America and have 1,000 or more employees, focusing their submission on the consumer-facing part of the business. Senior executives in CX, marketing, and digital business roles are invited to apply. Submit Nominations Here Get more information on eligibility, fill out the nomination form, and learn more about the awards process here: The Forrester team looks forward to your nominations and meeting the winners at our events this year in Nashville, London, and Sydney. Award winners and finalists will be notified ahead of each event. Learn more about Forrester’s Customer Obsession Awards program and previous award winners here. Register to attend Forrester’s 2025 North America, EMEA, and APAC CX Summits. source

AI announcements have become almost daily occurrences, yet Telstra’s recent joint venture with Accenture stands out as particularly noteworthy. This partnership signals a significant shift in how large enterprises are approaching AI adoption to create an AI advantage. Telstra understands that the only path to sustainable business advantage using AI lies in capturing and putting its organization’s unique and proprietary knowledge, expertise, and capabilities to work through AI models, apps, and agents. From Copilots To Agentic Workflows What’s the main purpose of this announcement? Telstra’s approach represents a fundamental departure from a more piecemeal AI implementation strategy. Rather than simply automating isolated tasks along existing business processes, the company aims to embrace agentic workflows to reinvent business processes. This isn’t just about making existing processes faster or more efficient; it’s about reimagining how work gets done in the first place. The telecommunications giant understands that creating an AI advantage requires more than just sprinkling AI capabilities across various departments. It demands a ground-up rethinking of how tasks are accomplished, putting Telstra’s proprietary knowledge to work but with AI serving as a collaborative partner rather than a mere tool. This approach bridges what Forrester calls the “process chasm” — the gap between a focus on productivity optimization and genuine business reinvention.   Where’s The ROI? Two years into the generative AI era, most enterprises are struggling to deliver meaningful returns on their AI investments. Telstra’s approach is different: Rather than treating AI as a cost center, it is building a revenue-generating platform. By developing and refining AI solutions through internal implementation first, Telstra positions itself to offer battle-tested, industry-specific AI capabilities to clients globally. The strategy is clever: Leverage deep telecommunications expertise to create unique AI solutions for process optimization and customer experience enhancement. This “build, then sell” approach amortizes the initial AI investment across a broader revenue base while creating new revenue streams to justify the substantial up-front costs. By combining its domain expertise with Accenture’s global delivery capabilities, Telstra is creating scalable enterprise AI solutions. Navigating The Expertise Gap This joint venture is also about securing access to increasingly scarce AI talent and expertise. Telstra is consolidating its AI partnerships down to just two primary relationships, including the Accenture joint venture. Talent and co-innovation partnerships are what it takes to succeed in the AI era. The global demand for AI specialists far outstrips supply, and Telstra’s strategic partnership ensures that it has priority access to the specialized skills needed to execute its ambitious vision, including deep expertise in business process and domains. Driving Adoption Through Empowerment Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Telstra’s strategy is its commitment to developing “data and AI fluency” across the workforce. This approach recognizes that the greatest productivity gains come not from automation alone but from empowering employees and customers to work differently. This internal transformation raises important questions about workforce dynamics, however. The joint venture’s stated goal of becoming “more efficient and streamlined” over time could potentially create tension with labor unions. The success of this initiative will likely depend on how well Telstra manages this transition, balancing efficiency gains with workforce concerns. AI FOMO: Strategic Imperative Or Market Pressure? While it’s tempting to view Telstra’s moves through the lens of “AI FOMO,” the structured and comprehensive nature of its approach suggests something more strategic at play. Yes, market pressures and competitive dynamics certainly influence the timing of such announcements, but the depth of Telstra’s commitment — evidenced by the joint venture structure, focus on workforce development, and holistic implementation approach — indicates a well-thought-out strategy rather than a reactive response to market trends. Looking Ahead As this partnership unfolds, several key questions emerge: How will Telstra measure success beyond traditional metrics? Can a telco successfully transition to an enterprise AI solutions provider? Can it achieve the sales velocity needed to justify the investment? How will it balance the drive for efficiency with workforce transformation? And perhaps most importantly, will this comprehensive approach to AI integration serve as a model for other enterprises? What’s clear is that Telstra’s initiative represents more than just another AI partnership announcement. It signals a maturing approach to AI adoption, one that recognizes the need for deep expertise, a focus on delivering business value, workforce development, and systematic transformation leading to business reinvention. Whether we’ve reached “peak AI FOMO” may be debatable, but what’s certain is that we’re entering a new phase of AI implementation — one that demands more thoughtful, comprehensive approaches to business transformation. source

Creator marketing programs have become a cornerstone of the social media marketing strategy across industries. As such, Forrester recommends an evolved set of metrics for measurement to optimize and show overall impact on the organization. Considering that two-thirds of B2C marketing decision-makers planned to increase investment in creator/influencer programs in 2024, teams from experimental to expert status must ensure that they are activating the right levers to maximize these partnerships. Add New Layers As The Investment Grows In our recent report, Forrester introduces frameworks for marketers to assess their progress in the journey toward running an effective multidimensional program, guiding them through the building blocks necessary at each investment level to achieve it. To effectively scale your creator marketing program, we recommend that you: Increase the number and types of creators. A wide array of creators with varying areas of specialty increases reach, shows different facets of the brand, and fosters connection with many communities. Add new business objectives. More substantial creator partnership investments allow marketers to widen the breadth of their creator activations and deliver on more business objectives. Diversify content types and delivery. Creator content is no longer limited to the confines of a consumer’s feed or “for you” page. Content repurposed for new channels such as out-of-home and CTV maximizes reach beyond the organic post. Invest in the right tech, services, and headcount. To run a full-scale creator program, adopt an influencer marketing platform and expand team support, insourced and/or outsourced. Prioritize mature measurement practices. Forrester’s Creator Composite Measurement Model aids in establishing a well-rounded measurement strategy to optimize creator marketing efforts and assess impact. This will ensure vested buy-in from leaders, unlocking greater opportunity for growth and exploration. Read the full report to leverage Forrester’s frameworks and strategically grow and scale creator marketing programs at any phase of commitment, from nascence to multimillion-dollar investment. Forrester clients, schedule a guidance session with me to discuss your creator marketing strategy. source

In 2025, the United States holds a pivotal role in the global economy, commanding 40% of tech spend, 37% of the digital economy, and 26% of global GDP. Despite the economic policy uncertainty of the new administration, several factors stand out as likely influencers of future US economic growth: Increased spending through tariffs and tax cuts. If the new administration helps to increase consumer spending through tax cuts and the imposition of tariffs on imported goods, the Federal Reserve will need to increase interest rates to manage inflation. Higher interest rates lower inflation, strengthen the US dollar, and attract foreign capital. In this scenario, countries with more US dollar debt such as Egypt, Turkey, and Argentina would suffer. A leaner government. Plans to cut jobs to streamline government operations could slow economic growth and reduce spending on imports, which would impact the economic growth of net exporter countries to the US such as China, Mexico, Vietnam, and Germany. The importance of consumer resilience. The new administration will place a high priority on protecting incomes. In the last three years, inflation cannibalized income growth gains. Large variations of per capita personal consumption expenditure growth across states over the last three years highlight state inequality and an uneven post-pandemic economic recovery. Sector-specific changes. The new administration will likely decrease spending on the green economy, reduce the reliance on chip imports, and increase defense spending. European industries, particularly life sciences, automotive, and chemicals, should brace for the impact of the new US administration’s policies. Eleven percent of EU exports to the US is from road vehicles, and 18% is from medicinal and pharmaceutical products. Protectionist measures from higher import tariffs could compel European car manufacturers to augment their production within the US. Additionally, the pharmaceutical sector might face pressures to lower prices, and the banking sector could see increased competition amidst deregulatory measures in the US. Businesses and countries will need to prepare for these various scenarios, and resilience and adaptability will be critical factors to success. European sectors must prepare for a protectionist US car industry, more pressure to lower pharmaceutical prices, and, as the US is a net exporter of financial services, more banking competition. Driven by the US, Forrester forecasts that North America will see the highest regional tech spend growth in 2025. We just published a report on the potential impact of a new US administration and policy on tech spend. Keep an eye out for Forrester’s upcoming global, US, and European tech forecasts, 2024 to 2029, that are soon to be published. Please contact your Forrester account manager or client success manager to set up a guidance session with me to learn more. source

In advance of its annual meeting in Davos, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its 2025 Global Risks Report. The report, based on the WEF’s Global Risk Perception Survey 2024-2025, identifies geopolitical risks as a top immediate concern for global risk officers and the broader risk community. Additionally, technological risks will become more problematic over the next two years, and environmental risks will be a predominant risk factor in the next 10 years. Here is our take on the highlights from the WEF report and what it means for risk leaders: Geopolitical conflict and its impact on global trade is the top concern today. WEF’s report highlights that today’s current risk outlook is dominated by concerns about state-based armed conflict, responsible for causing havoc for global business and international trade. Since the invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago, companies have faced the harsh realities of geopolitical impact on business. Our own data also ranks geopolitical and social instability in the top five factors driving increased enterprise risk. Despite ceasefires, new administrations, and policy changes, this geopolitical conflict is still expected to remain a top three global risk by 2027. Risk leaders should strengthen their geopolitical risk intelligence and analysis to gauge the impact to the business. Misinformation and disinformation tops the two-year outlook list — again. For the second year in a row, misinformation and disinformation occupies the number one slot on the medium-term outlook in the WEF Global Risks Report. Our own data (from Forrester’s Business Risk Survey, 2024, and The Top Systemic Risks, 2024 Forrester report) supports this and highlights risks surrounding data integrity, speed of innovation, and interconnectedness of global business systems — three of our top systemic risks for 2024. These risks accelerate and exacerbate the spread of misinformation and disinformation. As companies and governments ramp up investment in AI and AI’s capabilities continue to rapidly evolve, expect the exploitation and weaponization of information to become more widespread, easier to execute, and more difficult to detect. Cyber events round out the top five but are likely underestimated. The WEF report identifies cyber espionage and warfare as number five on the near-term (two-year) outlook; however, Forrester data highlights concern among enterprise risk decision-makers globally about velocity of cyberattacks as the biggest driver of increased enterprise risk in 2024. Enterprise risk leaders should focus on how they are detecting misinformation about their organization and how they are set up to detect and react quickly to potential critical misinformation events. Climate risk, a dominant long-term concern, is agnostic to politics or policy. The mood music about environmental sustainability and climate risk may have shifted globally, but risk management leaders remain steadfast that environmental risks will be a dominant force and top business concern in the next 10 years. In fact, four of the top five long-term risks are environmentally related. Risk leaders we speak to are quietly getting on with executing their plans to reduce their environmental impact, as they understand it not only reduces risk but, in many cases, contributes to cost reduction and better use of resources as well as being good for the planet. Leaders are not paying enough attention to technology risks and tech resilience. Forrester data shows that enterprise risk leaders see cyberattacks and reliance technology as their biggest drivers of increased risk in 2024. However, one surprise from the WEF report this year is that technology risks are underrepresented in the current medium- and long-term outlook. Considering the scale of global technology outages in 2024, and the risk implications of generative AI and considerations for how to secure it, risk leaders should ensure that their technology risks are addressed and that their reporting on risk to senior leaders covers this important area to safeguard business investment in AI in particular in 2025. Our upcoming report, “The State Of Enterprise Risk Management, 2025,” will dive further into the trends driving global enterprise risk in 2025 and will publish in the coming weeks. Forrester clients can book an inquiry or guidance session with any of us to discuss further. source