Digital Lifescapes

For decades, the story of digital commerce has been one of incremental improvement: better search, faster checkout, smarter recommendations. But something more fundamental is now underway. The emergence of agentic commerce, in which AI agents autonomously search, evaluate, and execute purchases on behalf of buyers, represents a genuine architectural shift in how commerce operates. Whether it becomes the revolution its proponents promise, or another technology that peaks at interesting pilot project, will depend on how effectively the AI industry addresses the structural challenges it faces. Agentic Commerce Market Development Agentic commerce involves deploying AI agents to handle the full purchasing cycle. Rather than browsing a website and entering card details yourself, you grant an AI agent the authority to act on your behalf, within defined parameters. The agent handles product discovery, comparison, negotiation, and payment execution. It draws on your procurement preferences, pur...

When B2B buyers consider a purchase they spend just 17 percent of that time meeting with vendors. When they are comparing multiple suppliers‚ time spent with any one salesperson is 5 or 6 percent. Self-directed B2B buyer online research has already changed procurement. IT vendors are less likely to be involved in solution assessment. Now, more disruptive changes are on the horizon. By 2028, 60 percent of B2B seller work will be executed through conversational user interfaces via Generative Artificial Intelligence sales technologies -- that's up from less than 5 percent in 2023, according to Gartner. Generative AI Market Development "Sales operations leaders and their technology teams must prepare for the convergence of new forms of artificial intelligence, dynamic process automation, and reinvented deal-planning activities that will transform the sales function," said Adnan Zijadic, director analyst at Gartner . According to the Gartner assessment, Generative AI (GenAI) ...

Historically, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) role was considered the leader of enterprise Digital Transformation initiatives. The belief was based on the notion that the primary skill set required was Technology expertise. However, IDC now predicts that the focus has shifted to Business expertise, talent development, and digital growth strategy. This revelation is just one of IDC's predictions for 2023, and beyond. Digital Transformation Market Development CIOs who demonstrate a mix of strategic purpose and people skills can now co-lead with their business counterparts -- to demonstrate and align new technologies for sustainable business outcomes. "In this new world, the role of the CIO has evolved to be one that is a digital business enabler using technology to compete," said Linus Lai, chief analyst at IDC A/NZ. IDC's top CIO Agenda predictions are as follows: Chief Business Technology Officer: By 2026, 60 percent of CIOs will find their roles being challenged...

Despite the current economic uncertainty, 72 percent of high technology industry leaders in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe have plans to grow revenue in 2023, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. Furthermore, nearly half of those tech industry leaders believe they will be able to outperform their competition this year, as the upside opportunities for cloud and SaaS vendors continue to grow. Business Technology Market Development Gartner conducted a survey in the second half of 2022 to understand how economic turbulence poses challenges to general managers, how confident they are in their ability to achieve their plans, and the measures planned to tackle the uncertainty. "Outperforming the market through an uncertain market requires an above average ability to execute on revenue ambitions," said Mark McDonald, vice president at Gartner . Moreover, the Gartner survey results indicate that almost half of the firms (46 percent) do not have a s...

Much has been written about the ongoing rise of public cloud computing across the globe, as more senior business leaders choose to deemphasize investment in on-premises IT infrastructure within traditional data centers. How did this happen, and what did enterprise CIOs and CTOs learn from this transition? Well, this transition was inevitable. Legacy IT organizations could have focused more on the Line of Business leader's desired business outcomes that investment makes possible, rather than the technical features and functions of IT solutions. Of course, the same could be said for legacy IT vendors. Some learned, the hard way, that terms like "Shadow IT" and "Rogue Users" were the wrong way to refer to and respond to the initial adoption of unsanctioned Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings. They also learned that upskilling IT staff to speak the language of business is now mandatory.  So, here we are at this point in time. What happens next is predictable (e.g...