One year ago today, we launched our generative AI tool, Izola. Our goal in introducing Izola was to help clients make faster progress on their top initiatives with answers from trusted Forrester research and data. Thanks to client feedback and continual refinement, Izola does just that — and more. Our clients have told us that Izola is a “time-saver,” “my go-to,” “a life-saver,” and “a friendly companion to guide me through all of Forrester’s exceptional content.” Izola has matured tremendously in the past year. It is now able to answer more questions and help with more types of use cases than it was just a few months ago. As clients get to know Izola, it increases and accelerates the value of research and continuous guidance. Along with unlocking immediate insights, it advances deeper, more informed conversations with Forrester experts as they apply our research to clients’ unique situations. To honor Izola today, we wanted to highlight a few of the ways our clients are using it. (If you are a Forrester client and haven’t tried Izola yet, you can try it here.) An anonymous letter of admiration for Izola from a B2B Summit North America attendee Home in on key Forrester research Clients tell us that they love our research but that digging through it can be overwhelming. Izola provides an expressway to the information they need. “There’s so much out there from Forrester — so much research and assets and goodness — that it’s really helping just kind of carve through that,” says Jodi Lebow, VP, global demand center at Hexagon. She adds that Izola also helps her gain more value from our reports. “What’s really unique is [that Izola is] not just presenting back a response to your question, but I love how it serves up other Forrester research that I can dig into to get more on the topic.” Discover what “good” looks like Clients look to Forrester to help them improve — so it’s no surprise that best-practice and how-to questions (e.g., “What are CX measurement best practices?” or “How should I build a business case for AI?”) are the most common types of queries Izola gets. Knowing that Forrester’s research and data back the answer gives clients confidence that they can start putting the responses into action. Some of our clients have used Izola’s answers as a basis for articulating important initiatives. “Izola helped me frame up our CX measurement strategy goals, objectives, vision, guiding principles, and key deliverables, which saved me so much time,” a client told us. “I was able to populate everything in about 15–20 minutes and then refine it to fit our business needs within the working team.” Get a clutch assist in presentation prep Izola has come up big for clients in critical moments. “Oftentimes, we can be in fire-drill situations where you have a presentation in an hour, which doesn’t allow you to get that analyst feedback,” says Susan Roberts, senior revenue marketing leader at Veolia Water Technologies. “Being able to have control and have speed at your fingertips has really been a great asset to me.” A recently added citations feature lets clients easily see the Forrester sources for bullet points or sentences included in Izola’s answers. That makes it easier to substantiate data, and it gives users added confidence. Find insights on markets and providers Izola gets a lot of queries related to vendors and solutions in specific markets. We’ve recently bolstered Izola’s ability to answer those questions so that clients can choose the right provider for their needs. Ask a question such as “Which vendors offer Zero Trust solutions?” and you’ll get a synthesized answer from the relevant Forrester Wave™, breaking out companies into our Wave’s “Leaders,” “Strong Performers,” “Contenders,” and “Challengers” categories. You can then click through to the Wave report for more context. Strengthen strategy with trends and insights Clients tell us that they use Izola to strengthen strategic decisions with trends (e.g., “What are trends in consumer e-commerce and digital retail?”) and insights (e.g., “How do CIOs make purchase decisions?”). We also see clients use Izola to answer strategic questions: “Should I pay employees based on Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS)?” “Should CMOs change their marketing organization based on genAI? If so, how?” “How should I adjust my IT budget in 2025?” What’s Next For Izola? We couldn’t be more excited about Izola’s journey so far — and we see its second year as being even more impactful. Expect Izola to get even smarter and more powerful as we keep expanding its capabilities to better serve clients. One of the coming features that we’re most excited about is the ability to summarize and “converse” with a specific report. From a dialogue box inside a report, a user will be able to ask Izola to summarize the report, get key actions to undertake, or ask specific questions about its content. We are also working to make Izola responses more visual by displaying relevant charts, graphs, and figures from reports alongside Izola’s text-based answers, as well as information on the relevant analysts to follow and engage with. We’ll also be working to integrate Izola into clients’ search experience, similar to what Google does today. Want to get to know Izola? Forrester clients, check it out here if you haven’t already done so. If you’re not yet a Forrester client, learn more about what Izola can do and what clients are saying about it. source