Transforming a lackluster IT development team into a top performer isn’t particularly difficult. It does, however, require a commitment to excellence that’s achieved by practicing several essential traits.  A focus on results is a key differentiator in high-performing IT teams that continue to be successful over the long term, says Shriram Natarajan, a director with technology research and advisory firm ISG. “For traditional IT teams, a customer focus would be sufficient, but development teams are one step removed from customer feedback,” he observes in an email interview. “The team should be focused on the results they have set for themselves as measured by metrics, such as velocity, predictability, quality and acceptance.”  A high-performing development team consistently focuses on eliminating toil, says Matthew Sharp, CISO at Xactly, a provider of enterprise cloud-based sales performance management solutions. “This involves reducing or removing repetitive, manual, and tedious processes by building automated pipelines, tackling technical debt, and streamlining workflows,” he explains in an online interview. “By minimizing unnecessary overhead, teams can focus their energy on impactful, innovative work, rather than on routine maintenance.”  Related:Bridging the Tech Gap: Fostering Cross-Generational Adoption Achieving Full Productivity  Eliminating toil not only enhances productivity, but also directly contributes to a better developer experience, Sharp says. “When teams feel empowered to focus on meaningful, creative tasks rather than repetitive ones, they tend to be happier, more engaged, and better equipped to deliver high-quality results.”  The most crucial habit of any high-performing IT development team is consistent, transparent communication coupled with systematic knowledge sharing, observes Harmeet Bhatia, a technical account manager at Amazon Web Services. “This habit goes beyond routine stand-ups or documentation — it encompasses a culture where information flows freely and deliberately across all team members.”  In an email interview, Bhatia notes that open communication can be “extraordinarily effective,” since it simultaneously addresses multiple critical development aspects. “When teams maintain open communication channels and actively share knowledge, they reduce bottlenecks, eliminate single points of failure, accelerate the onboarding of new members, and foster innovative problem-solving.” A team member struggling with a complex bug, for instance, can benefit from a colleague’s past experience with similar issues, potentially saving hours or days of troubleshooting.  Related:Tech Company Layoffs: The COVID Tech Bubble Bursts High-performing teams need cooldown periods to stay at their best, observes Ludovic Dehon, CTO of Kestra, which offers an open-source orchestration and applications scheduling platform. “No one can keep up high-intensity work all of the time without burning out,” he states via email. “We move through different seasons — times of intense productivity that bring results, followed by rest seasons where we can take a breather, work on creative projects, or tackle lighter tasks.”  Knowledge Sharing  Successful teams treat knowledge sharing as a core part of their development process, not an optional add-on, Bhatia says. “They recognize that the time invested in communication and documentation pays dividends through improved code quality, faster problem resolution, and more resilient team structures,” he explains. “This approach creates a positive feedback loop in which better communication leads to better outcomes, which in turn motivates more sharing.” The key, Bhatia notes, is finding the sweet spot where communication enhances rather than impedes development work.  Leaders should foster a culture of commitment, Natarajan recommends. Development work involves experimentation. “Leaders should focus on overall learning and progress rather than metrics like immediate velocity,” he says. “This enables the development team to be creative in their approach and find power boosts — like AI tools — along the way.”  Related:Risk Management for the IT Supply Chain Sharp suggests accepting a high tolerance for experimentation and learning from failures. “By accepting mistakes as part of the journey, teams can develop creative solutions and innovate more freely.” He also recommends ensuring that every team member understands the “why” behind the project’s goals. “When the whole team buys into the mission, they’re more likely to take ownership of the processes that drive success.”  As a release deadline approaches, work grows increasingly intense as teams and their leaders race toward the finish line. “After we wrap-up the release, we get a breather — two weeks to slow down, address technical debt, and think creatively about solving some of our toughest problems” Dehon says. “This natural cycle has helped our team bring fresh, creative ideas to some of our most challenging issues.”  Final Thoughts  Sharp stresses the importance of aligning technical improvements with strategic business goals. “When IT and security teams understand the business impact of their work, they’re motivated to innovate and reduce toil, knowing it benefits not only their efficiency but also the organization’s overall success.”  “We all look forward to celebrating each release, knowing that once it’s done, no one expects us to dive headfirst into the next cycle,” Dehon says. “Instead, we get time to pause, appreciate what we’ve accomplished, and think deeply about what we want to tackle next.”  source

Early returns on 2025 hiring for IT leaders suggest a robust market. For some recruitment firms, job growth for tech executive positions is at great heights. “We’re seeing record growth in our search firm almost immediately in 2025,” says Kelly Doyle, managing director at Heller Search Associates, an executive recruiting firm in Westborough, Mass., specializing in CIOs, CTOs, VP-level senior technology leaders, and executive technology talent. “This growth was anticipated, but it’s encouraging to see a spike in business.” Typically, election years bring fear, uncertainty, and doubt, causing a slowdown in hiring, Doyle says. With the election over and a new calendar year under way, organizations and placement firms are experiencing an influx of searches, Doyle says. Especially in an era of growing emphasis on AI, organizations recognize that without the right technology leadership, they will face challenges ahead and are trying to ward off disadvantages now. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Thirty-eight years after its creation, Adobe’s Photoshop remains one of the most successful and widely used software products to this day — with reportedly more than 90% of the world’s creative pros using the image editing and design tool. Now the company has introduced Photoshop on iPhone for free today — the first time Photoshop is getting a dedicated mobile app outside of its Elements stripped-down version launched back in late 2022. The app is available worldwide starting today, with an Android version expected later this year. Alongside the mobile launch, Adobe is offering a new Photoshop Mobile and Web plan that enables seamless editing across devices. Pricing options include a limited free version of the app — with full on-device editing tools but no cross-platform support — and a premium upgrade available for $7.99 per month or $69.99 annually. Current Photoshop or Adobe Creative Cloud subscribers can access the mobile version at no extra cost as part of their existing plans. The mobile app includes essential Photoshop tools such as layering, masking, Tap Select, and Spot Healing Brush. Users can also access Firefly-powered generative AI features like Generative Fill and Generative Expand. Designed specifically for mobile devices, the app allows both experienced professionals and newcomers to create high-quality visuals directly from their phones. Ashley Still, senior vice president of digital media at Adobe, said the company is excited to bring Photoshop to mobile, making its design capabilities more accessible and intuitive. She emphasized that the app empowers creators to produce visually stunning content from anywhere. New features and key capabilities • Core Photoshop Tools: Layering, masking and blending tools tailored for mobile workflows • Generative AI Tools: Firefly-powered Generative Fill and Generative Expand for quickly adding and editing image elements • Tap Select Tool: Intuitive touch-based selection for removing, recoloring or replacing parts of an image • Spot Healing Brush: Quick removal of unwanted elements and distractions from photos • Object Select: Precise selection of people and objects with enhanced accuracy • Direct Integration: Seamless workflows with Adobe Express, Adobe Fresco and Adobe Lightroom • Access to Adobe Stock: A library of free assets for creating unique visuals • Advanced Editing in Premium Plan: Magic Wand, Clone Stamp, Content-Aware Fill and advanced blend modes • Typography Tools: Over 20,000 fonts with the option to import custom fonts • Cross-Device Workflow: Start a project on mobile and continue editing with more precision on the web or desktop Redesigned for mobile The app is purpose-built for phones, with adjustments to the user interface that make tools easier to use with touch controls. Selection tools and touch targets have been optimized to ensure accuracy, even on smaller screens. Tap Select allows users to isolate objects with a single tap, while larger touch targets help prevent accidental selections. Object Select can identify subjects like people, animals and objects, streamlining the editing process. Based on a demo presentation received yesterday during a video call with Adobe, the app’s interface is designed to be intuitive, with essential tools accessible within thumb reach and a clean layout that minimizes visual clutter. Real-world examples Adobe’s press materials included several examples that highlight the app’s functionality: • A photo of a dog was edited using Generative Fill to remove unwanted elements like a leash and smartphone from the background, seamlessly blending the filled areas with the surrounding environment. • In another example, the Remove Tool was used to eliminate distractions like hands and shadows from a photo of two people, creating a cleaner composition. • Object Select was demonstrated by isolating a tennis racket from its background with a few taps, showcasing the tool’s precision and speed. • Additionally, compositing capabilities were shown through a GIF that combined vibrant elements like oversized flowers into a photo of two people, illustrating the app’s creative potential. The Photoshop Mobile and Web plan enables users to transition between devices without losing progress. However, editing Photoshop files in a web browser requires a Creative Cloud subscription, even if the file was originally created on the iOS app. This ensures that advanced editing features and cloud-based workflows are accessible to subscribers across platforms. Impact on enterprise decision-makers For enterprise teams, the expansion of Photoshop to mobile and web platforms offers greater flexibility and efficiency in creative workflows. Designers and marketers can now make quick edits, create visuals and collaborate on projects from anywhere, reducing reliance on desktop environments. Adobe’s Firefly AI models, which power many of the new mobile features, provide a competitive advantage over rivals like Midjourney, DALL·E and Krea AI by offering commercially safe generative AI tools. Firefly is trained on licensed Adobe Stock content and public domain materials, ensuring that AI-generated content can be used commercially without copyright concerns. This makes Photoshop a compelling option for businesses that need to create professional-grade visuals while maintaining compliance. Additionally, the seamless integration with Adobe Creative Cloud and other Adobe tools streamlines workflows, enabling teams to maintain consistency and productivity across devices. The Android version of Photoshop is expected to launch later this year, further expanding Adobe’s ecosystem of creative tools across mobile, web and desktop platforms. source

In today’s fast-paced business environment, operational excellence is crucial for organizational success. The key to achieving this lies in understanding all processes. Successful organizations excel by having their operations teams categorize and sequence every B2B process, identifying where breakdowns occur and addressing them effectively. But often, go-to-market teams seem to drown in processes and operations teams struggle to understand how these processes connect. Each B2B process is like a link in a chain, interconnected and dependent on the others. Operations teams need a way to visualize and synchronize these connected B2B processes to ensure that everything flows smoothly. The Forrester B2B Process Chain Framework acts like a life preserver, providing essential support for go-to-market teams, with seven categories relating the sequence of B2B processes. Each category represents a crucial link in the chain of key processes for sales, marketing, and product. Here are the seven interconnected categories within the Forrester B2B Process Chain Framework: Strategize: establishes direction and alignment within the organization. Plan: sets clear goals and priorities to guide strategy execution. Design: creates effective and balanced processes for internal and external audiences. Build: develops scalable efficiency and effectiveness for the go-to-market strategy. Deploy: executes to achieve desired outcomes by implementing the plan. Measure: gains insight into performance to drive continuous improvement. Optimize: improves progress toward goals and ensures execution excellence. By using the Forrester B2B Process Chain Framework, organizations can align all processes with a focus on excellence and adaptability. Sales and marketing teams rely on strong processes managed by revenue operations. Sometimes, marketing and sales need to focus on their own tasks — different strokes for different folks. Forrester provides separate process-chain reports for both marketing and sales operations to accommodate this. Explore how these process chains can transform your business and unlock operational excellence in our related reports covering the Forrester B2B Process Chain Framework. And to learn even more, join us at Forrester’s B2B Summit North America from March 31 to April 3, 2025, in Phoenix. We have keynote, breakout, workshop, and roundtable sessions focused on process optimization as the key to operational excellence. source

The partnership between the two companies already allows customers to use data bi-directionally from Google BigQuery and Salesforce leveraging Salesforce’s zero copy technology. As part of the deal, Agentforce will be able to use Grounding with Google Search for dynamic retrieval that gives agents the power to reference up-to-the-minute data, news, current events, and credible citations. For example, a supply chain management and logistics agent could track shipments and monitor inventory levels in Salesforce Commerce Cloud. It could also use real-time data, such as weather conditions and geopolitical events, to identify potential disruptions. The partners said they expect to make this capability available in the coming months. The deal will also enable customers to use Salesforce’s Agentforce, Data Cloud, and Customer 360 on Google Cloud’s infrastructure. The partners noted that once Salesforce’s products are available on Google Cloud, customers will be able to procure Salesforce offerings via Google Cloud Marketplace. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More The release of OpenAI GPT-4.5 has been somewhat disappointing, with many pointing out its insane price point (about 10 to 20X more expensive than Claude 3.7 Sonnet and 15 to 30X more costly than GPT-4o). However, given that this is OpenAI’s largest and most powerful non-reasoning model, it is worth considering its strengths and the areas where it shines.  Better knowledge and alignment There is little detail about the model’s architecture or training corpus, but we have a rough estimate that it has been trained with 10X more compute. And, the model was so large that OpenAI needed to spread training across multiple data centers to finish in a reasonable time. Bigger models have a larger capacity for learning world knowledge and the nuances of human language (given that they have access to high-quality training data). This is evident in some of the metrics presented by the OpenAI team. For example, GPT-4.5 has a record-high ranking on PersonQA, a benchmark that evaluates hallucinations in AI models. Practical experiments also show that GPT-4.5 is better than other general-purpose models at remaining true to facts and following user instructions. Users have pointed out that GPT-4.5’s responses feel more natural and context-aware than previous models. Its ability to follow tone and style guidelines has also improved. After the release of GPT-4.5, AI scientist and OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy, who had early access to the model, said he “expect[ed] to see an improvement in tasks that are not reasoning-heavy, and I would say those are tasks that are more EQ (as opposed to IQ) related and bottlenecked by e.g. world knowledge, creativity, analogy making, general understanding, humor, etc.” However, evaluating writing quality is also very subjective. In a survey that Karpathy ran on different prompts, most people preferred the responses of GPT-4o over GPT-4.5. He wrote on X: “Either the high-taste testers are noticing the new and unique structure but the low-taste ones are overwhelming the poll. Or we’re just hallucinating things. Or these examples are just not that great. Or it’s actually pretty close and this is way too small sample size. Or all of the above.” Better document processing In its experiments, Box, which has integrated GPT-4.5 into its Box AI Studio product, wrote that GPT-4.5 is “particularly potent for enterprise use-cases, where accuracy and integrity are mission critical… our testing shows that GPT-4.5 is one of the best models available both in terms of our eval scores and also its ability to handle many of the hardest AI questions that we have come across.” In its internal evaluations, Box found GPT-4.5 to be more accurate on enterprise document question-answering tasks — outperforming the original GPT-4 by about 4 percentage points on their test set​. Source: Box Box’s tests also indicated that GPT-4.5 excelled at math questions embedded in business documents, which older GPT models often struggled with​. For example, it was better at answering questions about financial documents that required reasoning over data and performing calculations.  GPT-4.5 also showed improved performance at extracting information from unstructured data. In a test that involved extracting fields from hundreds of legal documents, GPT-4.5 was 19% more accurate than GPT-4o. Planning, coding, evaluating results Given its improved world knowledge, GPT-4.5 can also be a suitable model for creating high-level plans for complex tasks. Broken-down steps can then be handed over to smaller but more efficient models to elaborate and execute. According to Constellation Research, “In initial testing, GPT-4.5 seems to show strong capabilities in agentic planning and execution, including multi-step coding workflows and complex task automation.” GPT-4.5 can also be useful in coding tasks that require internal and contextual knowledge. GitHub now provides limited access to the model in its Copilot coding assistant and notes that GPT-4.5 “performs effectively with creative prompts and provides reliable responses to obscure knowledge queries.” Given its deeper world knowledge, GPT-4.5 is also suitable for “LLM-as-a-Judge” tasks, where a strong model evaluates the output of smaller models. For example, a model such as GPT-4o or o3 can generate one or several responses, reason over the solution and pass the final answer to GPT-4.5 for revision and refinement. Is it worth the price? Given the huge costs of GPT-4.5, though, it is very hard to justify many of the use cases. But that doesn’t mean it will remain that way. One of the constant trends we have seen in recent years is the plummeting costs of inference, and if this trend applies to GPT-4.5, it is worth experimenting with it and finding ways to put its power to use in enterprise applications. It is also worth noting that this new model can become the basis for future reasoning models. Per Karpathy: “Keep in mind that that GPT4.5 was only trained with pretraining, supervised finetuning and RLHF [reinforcement learning from human feedback], so this is not yet a reasoning model. Therefore, this model release does not push forward model capability in cases where reasoning is critical (math, code, etc.)… Presumably, OpenAI will now be looking to further train with reinforcement learning on top of GPT-4.5 model to allow it to think, and push model capability in these domains.” source

Wix and Squarespace rank among today’s top website builders, serving startups, growing brands, and creatives wanting a straightforward website solution. Wix shines with its highly flexible editor and app market, suitable for users looking for maximum creative control and customization. On the other hand, Squarespace offers sleek, ready-made designs and integrated marketing tools better suited for users who focus on ease of use and cohesive brand image. While both platforms support e-commerce, content creation, and mobile optimization, they differ in pricing structures, approaches to editing, and overall user experience. Wix vs Squarespace: Comparison table Wix and Squarespace are both prominent website builders, each offering valuable tools to craft a sophisticated website. The table below presents a clear, side-by-side comparison of their key features to help you choose the best fit. Wix Squarespace Best for Maximum creative control and customization Simplicity and structured website building Uptime Good consistency Excellent consistency Website templates Over 800 186 Integrations Extensive Good Starting price $17 $25 For more information Wix vs. Squarespace: Pricing Wix pricing Wix provides a range of pricing plans, including monthly, yearly, and multi-year options. Each plan includes 24/7 customer support, site analytics, dedicated storage, and a free domain for the first year. While Wix promotes its yearly and multi-year plans as offering better value, it does not specify the exact discount amounts. All plans come with a 14-day money-back guarantee. Free trial available Lite: $17 per month Core: $29 per month Business: $36 per month Business Elite: $159 per month Wix has four pricing plans, starting at $17 per month. More expensive plans offer more features for business, e-commerce, and advanced customization. Squarespace pricing Squarespace simplifies pricing with clear monthly and annual pricing plans, with annual plans providing a discount for long-term use. Some benefits, like a free custom domain for the first year, are only available with an annual subscription. Every plan includes professionally designed templates, fully managed cloud hosting, and built-in SEO tools, ensuring a seamless website-building experience. It’s worth noting that Squarespace’s money-back guarantee only applies to annual plans. Free trial available Basic: $25 per month Core: $36 per month Plus: $56 per month Advanced: $139 per month Squarespace pricing starts at $25 per month, with annual plans available at a discounted rate. Wix is the winner in terms of pricing, thanks to its flexible plans and a risk-free trial. While the Squarespace cost structure might appear cheaper at first glance, Wix offers a 14-day money-back guarantee, even on its monthly plans, making it a less risky starting point. Plus, Wix has a free tier, so you can explore the platform without spending any money upfront. Wix vs. Squarespace: Feature comparison Uptime Wix offers a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee, but recent data from December 2024 to February 2025 tells a different story. During this period, Wix experienced multiple incidents, including a major outage in January and a partial outage in February. While these disruptions were temporary, they implicated site availability for users. Wix experienced inconsistent uptimes from December 2024 to February 2025. Like Wix, Squarespace promises 99.9 percent uptime. However, historical uptime data from December 2024 to February 2025 shows the website builder outperformed that guarantee. Throughout this period, Squarespace maintained a perfect 100 percent uptime with no reported outages. Squarespace maintained 100% uptime from December 2024 to February 2025. For uptime, Squarespace wins with its consistency. While Wix had incidents that disrupted availability, Squarespace maintained flawless performance. If reliability is a top priority, Squarespace is the stronger choice. Design Flexibility Wix delivers a high level of design flexibility with over 800 templates and a drag-and-drop editor that lets you tweak almost every element of your site. You can change colors, fonts, layouts, and customize buttons and menus to match your brand. Its versatility is great for creative freedom, but it can feel overwhelming, especially for beginners. Overall, Wix is an excellent choice if you want full control over your site’s design and don’t mind spending time fine-tuning. Wix has a wide variety of design tools to tailor nearly every website element, but the abundance of options can be overwhelming. Squarespace brings design flexibility within a more structured framework compared to Wix. Its selection of over 180 templates is mobile-responsive but less customizable, as it uses a grid-based editor that can be restrictive. Customization options in Squarespace are simpler but allow you to adjust fonts, colors, and layouts while maintaining a professional look. Its editor is less flexible than Wix’s but more user-friendly, making it ideal if you want a guided experience. If you value simplicity over endless customization, Squarespace is what you need. Square has limited design tools, but its clear layout makes customization easy to manage, even for beginners. Wix dominates in design flexibility with its unrestricted editor that gives complete creative control, letting you customize virtually every site element, even without coding knowledge. Unlike Squarespace’s more systematic approach, Wix empowers you to develop truly unique websites by adjusting even the smallest details to match your vision. E-commerce Tools Wix provides a wide range of e-commerce features, including a custom online store where you can upload up to 50,000 products. It also introduces a mobile-optimized storefront and Wix Multilingual for translating site content and expanding global reach. Its support for more than 80 payment gateways enhances payment flexibility, while its abandoned cart recovery and automated email campaigns drive sales. Additionally, Wix’s multichannel selling feature allows you to sell on various platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Google Shopping, and eBay. Wix lets you build captivating e-commerce sites with customizable selling features. Similarly, Squarespace has robust e-commerce functionalities, including marketing tools to boost sales and shipping rules so you can tailor how your products are fulfilled. It also enhances reach through multichannel selling, syncing catalogs across Instagram, Facebook, Google Search, and YouTube from one dashboard. That said, Squarespace has a limit of 10,000 products per site and supports fewer payment options compared to Wix. It also charges transaction fees on some plans, which can impact profitability as sales

Each year, Forrester recognizes companies that have excelled in a particular area of marketing, sales, product, or customer engagement through our B2B Programs Of The Year (POY) Awards. These are always special occasions, but they feel particularly meaningful this year given the challenging backdrop of changing buyer behaviors, constrained budgets, expanding growth goals, and breakneck technological innovation. For 2025, our North America POY winners exemplify excellence in the following seven categories: Content Strategy & Operations Customer Engagement Demand & ABM Marketing Executives Portfolio Marketing & Product Revenue Operations Sales We’re excited to celebrate this year’s winners at B2B Summit North America, happening March 31–April 3 in Phoenix and as a digital experience. By attending, you’ll have the opportunity to learn firsthand about the innovative initiatives these companies have executed, as well as their tips and tricks in overcoming challenges and how they achieved or even exceeded their goals. And the winners are … Conga — Customer Engagement Conga, a revenue lifecycle management platform, transformed customer success digitally to drive greater adoption, retention, and expansion through data-driven insights and automation, all geared around a central community hub. At B2B Summit, Conga will show how community members enjoy usage rates as much as 28% higher than non-engaged peers. The results are more effective postsale experiences that produce higher net and gross revenue retention and up to seven times more expansion pipeline among engaged accounts. FreeWheel — Portfolio Marketing & Product FreeWheel is a global technology platform for the TV advertising industry, structured to provide a wide breadth of solutions to help the advertising industry achieve its goals. The company’s product management and product marketing leaders tackled organizational inefficiencies by adopting commercialization and product launch best practices, aligning its teams to a well-defined and structured process. At B2B Summit, representatives from the company will detail their journey, including the establishment of a standardized framework for cross-functional collaboration. The session will also cover opportunity research and prioritization, development of a strategic launch program, and standardized planning processes. HCLTech — Content Strategy & Operations HCLTech is a global technology company that delivers digital, engineering, cloud, and AI capabilities powered by a broad portfolio of technology services and products. Like many organizations, the company identified opportunities to optimize content creation, sparking a strategic reassessment to drive greater impact and audience relevance. At B2B Summit, HCLTech will share its transformation to a content strategy marked by efficiency, personalization, and engagement. By adopting AI and generative AI technologies, the company is reengineering how it produces, delivers, and optimizes content. Palo Alto Networks — Demand & ABM Palo Alto Networks, a leader in cybersecurity, has significantly transformed its revenue process. At B2B Summit, the company will share how it has made the change from focusing on marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) to a process focused on buying groups and opportunities. Concerned about inefficiencies in its previous MQL process, it leveraged a short six-month pilot to prove that adopting buying groups drives dramatic improvement in both process efficiency and pipeline growth. Palo Alto Networks will discuss tips and techniques for selecting and executing a successful pilot, as well as the changes in people, process, and systems being made to expand enterprisewide. TEKsystems — Sales TEKsystems, a leading provider of business and technology services, emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic seeking to address shifts in its marketplace and customer expectations. At B2B Summit, the company will share how it invested in upgraded enablement programs and sales technology and implemented tighter coordination with marketing to level up the effectiveness and efficiency of its sellers. Complemented by a more strategic buyer-aligned sales process, these initiatives informed seller upskilling and new manager-level competencies that helped generate sponsorship from internal leaders and influencers, leading to broad-based and measurable revenue team success. TriNet — Revenue Operations TriNet, a provider of full-service HR solutions, transformed its sales development representative (SDR) team to boost collaboration, improve follow-up timing, and enhance prospecting effectiveness and efficiency. At B2B Summit, TriNet will share how the company refined processes, selected new technology, updated reporting, and adjusted team structures, resulting in better insights and outcomes. Now, the SDR team focuses on both doing the right things and doing things right. Workday — Marketing Executives Workday is an AI platform that helps more than 11,000 organizations around the world and across industries manage their most important assets — their people and money. At B2B Summit, the company will share how it enhanced its go-to-market strategy and marketing campaigns. This led to the creation of a new, more streamlined process for unified campaign planning and execution, which fostered greater efficiency, collaboration, and a focus on measurable business outcomes. Get ready to be inspired by the full stories of these award winners’ successes at B2B Summit North America next month. Our B2B Programs Of The Year Awards sessions happen Wednesday, April 2 from 3:30–4 p.m. We hope to see you there! source

By Dorothy Atkins ( February 25, 2025, 10:37 PM EST) — A California federal judge presiding over a high-stakes evidentiary hearing into whether Apple has complied with her 2021 antitrust injunction threatened to sanction Apple’s commercial litigation director Tuesday, telling counsel she has “significant concerns” about Apple’s over-designation of attorney-client privilege, saying, “Your client is not entitled to have you engage in unethical conduct.”… Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

For those of us in the US who track the economy and its implications for consumers and the brands that sell to them, it’s been a head-spinning couple of months. Policies have been coming at us fast and furious as a new administration looks to stamp its mark on the economy. Of course, the US is not alone in its volatility; the Canadians are going through their own brand of turmoil and looking at fresh elections early in the year, and in the UK, a different party is now at the helm of an economy that is proving to be extremely sluggish. In the eye of these political storms sits consumers at their kitchen tables, working out what all of this means for them and their families. That is what interests us, and it’s what interests brands that sell to these consumers. To better understand these kitchen-table discussions, we surveyed consumers in the US, Canada, and the UK using Forrester’s ConsumerVoices Market Research Online Community earlier this month. Here’s what we found. By The Numbers   Only a quarter of the respondents in the US feel like their financial situation in 2025 will be better than that in 2024; in Canada (19%) and the UK (14%), the outlook is far more grim. A third of US respondents feel that 2025 will be worse than the year before; yet again, Canada and the UK are more pessimistic (nearly half the respondents in Canada believe their financial situation will be worse!). The three-year outlook gets better for US respondents than the current expectation, as 38% expect to be better off in the next three years versus their current situation. In Canada and the UK, however, one doesn’t see that same improvement in outlook (19% and 14%, respectively, expect to be better off in the next three years — that’s pretty close to how they feel today). In Their Own Words When listening to consumers, it can often be hard to extricate the kitchen-table reality from the political polemic. This is especially true in the US, where emotions are running high as a new administration is widely cheered or jeered, depending on the audience. We asked consumers several questions about their outlook and spending expectations and have tried to abstract away from the political undertones to get at underlying sentiment and economic behavior. Here are some of the key themes that emerged: Pessimism weighs down the consumer (much as it has for the last couple of years), and a sense of fait accompli pervades their outlook. Consumers tell us that they “feel like inflation and price of goods was high last year and believe it will continue to be that way for this year” and that while they are “hoping for improvements, the current economic climate makes [them] think things will likely stay pretty similar.” High prices are hurting, and in the US, a flurry of tariffs (implemented and threatened) has stoked fears of what consumers describe as “pouring gasoline on the inflation fire.” Most economists worry equally about the adverse effects of such trade policies on consumer pricing and economic growth (as we have described in a separate note about tariffs). Consumers are belt-tightening, and those who are not are resigned to forking out more for the same things. Some say they will economize by spending “less on eating out, entertainment — not taking a vacation this year,” while others expect to spend more because “streaming subscriptions go up in price regularly and food costs are going up, so restaurant prices will, too.” Increased spending is more about being resigned to higher costs than about sparking joy from purchases. Big purchases are becoming inevitable — while many consumers are “delaying a car purchase due to inflation” or making fewer purchases “unless absolutely needed … [of] home appliances and renovations and vacations,” others face the inevitable. After deferring big-ticket items for several years while they hunkered down during a tough economy, they’ve arrived at the end of the tether: “I just moved into a smaller but newer home, so now renovations — possibly an appliance purchase unless I can fix my existing appliance.” (Tyler Castro contributed to the analyses and research for this post.) Learn more: Read more about how tariffs will affect kitchen-table economics, consumer behavior, and brand strategy. Follow my work: Go to my Forrester bio and click “Follow.” Chat with me: If you are a Forrester client interested in discussing these topics, please schedule time with me for an inquiry or a guidance session. Plan a session: If you are a Forrester client looking to host a strategy session on a related topic (for example, “the future of digital consumer experience related to AI”), please contact your account team or email me at [email protected]. source