(By Carl Doty at Forrester Research and Nader Ghaffari at Venture Scanner) Successfully engaging with the startup community will not only give corporations a competitive advantage but can also mean the difference between future relevance or demise. As a result, corporations of all sizes are launching innovation programs. The corporations’ objectives are chiefly to understand […]
Our Predictions 2019 guide, “Transformation Goes Pragmatic,” is live. What do we mean by pragmatism? A sense of realism, practical steps, a desire for tangible outcomes. It’s a good description for what we are seeing in a market that carried ambitious strategies into 2018 but ran afoul of internal headwinds. Don’t get me wrong, the […]
Last year, Forrester predicted that cloud computing would radically accelerate enterprise transformation everywhere. After a decade of powering small and medium business success — and giving disruptive companies the tools and technologies they needed to compete head on with the world’s largest firms — cloud was poised to drive significant enterprise change in the very firms being […]
Seamless customer experience is more than continuity across devices — seams traverse channels, contexts, and time. Principal Analyst Jennifer Wise discusses how firms can remove damaging seams using data, design, and technology. Featuring: Jennifer Wise, Principal Analyst Show Notes: By now you know that experience matters in whether customers stay with you or switch to […]
The US population is growing and aging. The volume of patients and the prevalence of chronic conditions are rising. Payers and providers alike are feeling the strain of healthcare’s antiquated system and the damaging effects it has on quality of care and revenue. As a result, the US healthcare market is going through a much-needed […]
We get a lot of questions from clients about the differences between digital asset management (DAM) and web content management systems (web CMSes). In this two-part series, Mark Grannan and I break down the technologies into four categories: users, assets, workflow, and delivery. In our first video, we tackle users and assets. Do you need […]
Stay tuned for updates from the Forrester blogs.
The Forrester New Wave™: Cybersecurity Risk Ratings, Q4 2018 Earlier today, we published “The Forrester New Wave™: Cybersecurity Risk Ratings, Q4 2018” evaluation. We take a close look at the nine most important vendors in this rising market, reviewing their current capabilities, customer references, and strategic road maps. This includes vendor profiles, with our analysis and buyer […]
CMOs Should Rethink Their Efficiency Argument For An Effectiveness Strategy Headlines blustering about in-house agencies have marketers buzzing and agencies fretting. While the in-house trend has grown in popularity, it still lacks in maturity. Forrester partnered with leading industry association In-House Agency Forum to track the progress of in-house development. Here’s what we know. Popularity Soars […]
Fashion is the second-largest retail category after grocery. The eCommerce shift is a significant, palpable movement in most economies. A quarter of clothing, accessories, and footwear (fashion) spending already occurs online and is still rapidly growing. Brick-and-mortar and eCommerce retailers are vying for shoppers’ attention and dollars. In our recently published “Forrester Analytics: Online Fashion […]
Just a few years ago, conversations about robotic process automation (RPA) were scattered and far between. Those familiar with RPA had a limited understanding of its potential and at best had carried out only a few isolated “proof of concept” experiments. Today, the RPA market is estimated to reach $2.9 billion by 2021, and conversations are becoming more frequent. As a Forrester advisor on the Technology Council, I’ve partnered with senior technology leaders to find […]
Yesterday, SAP announced that it is acquiring Qualtrics for a hefty $8 billion in cash. For SAP, this does make some sense. SAP is often perceived as being a legacy provider that struggles to play in the consumer space, and this acquisition may help it make a larger data play. It may also enable SAP […]
I’ve always been attracted to the power of empathy. That being said, I’m a longtime fan of “soft” skills — skills that are helpful in relationship-building, making me a better friend and (presumably) a more tolerable colleague. Empathy clearly fits squarely there. But a more savvy marketer? A more insightful executive? A veritable customer whisperer? […]
I was in Shanghai last weekend to witness the largest 11/11 in history. Alibaba breaks another record, with 2018 GMV reaching RMB213.5 billion (US$30.8 billion), 27% higher than last year’s RMB168.3 billion ($25.3 billion). I’m excited to share some of the event highlights here: Stay tuned for the post-event report on Singles’ Day 2018.
Earlier last week, UK high-street apparel retailer New Look announced plans to close 85 stores, up from the 60 it announced in March. These closures are happening under the auspices of a restructuring deal (a CVA, first introduced as a “company voluntary arrangement” in the Companies Act 1980). Simultaneously, it unveiled a return to profitability […]
Automation and AI now impact every job — including every customer service job. AI handles, with increased confidence, repetitive work, allowing customer service agents to focus on tasks of greater value to the company. And customer service robots — which we define as semi- or fully autonomous physical machines that perform services to augment humans or automate tasks — […]
The US healthcare industry is a gold mine for industrial hackers. Commandeering hospital systems has become stable and profitable work for those willing to execute these attacks. Despite years of embarrassing data breaches, the industry has yet to respond and remains unprepared for the threat at hand. The US Department of Health and Human Services […]
New Look’s recently announced store closures are not explained uniquely by the growth of eCommerce. In the year leading up to March 2018, the company’s total sales — including online sales — both declined, which is worrying because, typically, we would expect that eCommerce would continue to grow as store sales decline with footfall. New Look acknowledges […]
Singles’ Day, the world’s largest online shopping festival, is celebrating its 10th anniversary. There’s no doubt that we will see another record-smashing year, although gross merchandise volume (GMV) will no longer be the highlight. Singles’ Day has always been Alibaba’s testbed for new business models and technologies, and this year is no exception. AI and […]
Africa is home to 20% of our planet’s land and 16% of its people, but none of the hyperscale public clouds run from data centers there — yet. Microsoft will offer Azure from data centers in Cape Town and Johannesburg later this year, and Amazon recently announced plans to follow suit with an Amazon Web Services […]
Many attendees of our B2B Marketing 2018 Forum remarked how the energy was high and the focus was driven — the marketing and sales leaders who joined us in Austin were on a mission to overdeliver on business expectations for their practice and figure out how to manage the conflicting priorities that 31% of respondents to […]
Like the opening sequence of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the social media landscape is getting “flipped-turned upside down” by the ascendance of stories. Well, that may be a bit dramatic, but they are certainly starting to make waves. Stories are growing in popularity as a mode of sharing and consuming content on social media. […]
As we move into 2019, Forrester sees digital transformation as a continued driving force for the software industry, pushing teams to accelerate their innovative efforts. Last year, Forrester predicted that a host of enabling technologies, such as serverless computing, integrated DevOps tools, AI+ML, and low-code platforms, would enable digital transformation efforts. We also predicted the […]
For some time, the burning question has been: Will robots replace humans? While the proliferation of robotic process automation (RPA) has reduced headcount in the back office, it’s a different story for customer service and sales. In a Forrester survey, 46% of companies said sales and marketing are leading the investment in and adoption of […]
“I get knocked down, but I get up again.” — Chumbawamba Halfway through the 20-year-long age of the customer, empowered consumers are more informed about their purchases, demand data privacy, and dictate the experiences that they want. Brands have been beaten down with every misstep, many of which snowballed into broad PR crises: United Airlines, Wells Fargo, Starbucks, […]
Bridging The Gulf Between Tech Buyer Expectations And Vendor Content B2B buyers increasingly expect contextual content tailored to their unique circumstances, which means an ongoing challenge for B2B technology marketers is crafting engaging content that appeals to customers across different touchpoints. However, most technology vendor content falls short of these expectations. In our recent study, 60% […]
I am excited to announce the publication of “The Forrester Wave™: Marketing Measurement And Optimization Solutions In Asia Pacific, Q4 2018.” In our first 36-criteria evaluation of marketing measurement and optimization solutions in Asia Pacific (AP), we identified the seven most significant vendors — Analytic Partners, Data2Decisions, Datalicious, Fractal Analytics, Impact, Neustar, and Nielsen — […]
