artificial intelligence (AI)

AWS just announced Amazon SageMaker Ground Truth to help companies create training data sets for machine learning. This is a powerful new service for folks who have access to lots of data that hasn’t been consistently annotated. In the past, humans would have to label a massive corpus of images or frames within video to […]

The healthcare industry is experiencing some much-needed transformation and disruption. Looking ahead to next year, we made five bold predictions. Watch the video below to learn what is in store for the future of healthcare. Check out the full report here, and join our webinar on December 3 for a more in-depth understanding of our predictions. Click here to […]

Like most people, I consider November a good time to start thinking about the clean slate that a new year brings. There is lots of room to reflect on one year and get ready for the next one with a bit more, well, “resolve,” so to speak. I’ll be an all-around better person, for sure — […]

Web Summit took place for the third time in Lisbon earlier in November. Over the years, Web Summit has become one of the leading global conferences to discuss everything technology. The large presence of startups and fast pace of presentations across many different stages give Web Summit a particular edge. It is impossible for a single […]

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? […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Digital is the rocket fuel for retail’s growth. But that growth requires retailers and brands to keep up — and step up — how quickly they evolve in terms of people, processes, products, and more. On top of all that, in 2019 we’ll see factors such as global economies, trade barriers, rising wages, and marketplaces pack a […]

Last year, Forrester predicted that firms would struggle with new technologies, particularly artificial intelligence. This prediction came true: Firms continued with AI experiments that lacked meaningful results. Adoption has now slowed (51% adoption in 2017; 53% adoption in 2018). And budgets remain low in contrast to the ROI and transformation expectations for AI (under $2M […]

Automation will be central to the next phase of digital transformation, driving new levels of customer value such as faster delivery of products, higher quality and dependability, deeper personalization, and greater convenience. Last year, Forrester predicted that automation would reach a tipping point — altering the workforce, augmenting employees, and driving new levels of customer value. Since then, […]

The rise of AI in sales technology only makes it easier for sales managers to keep tabs on salespeople, salespeople say. AI gives sales managers more visibility into a sales rep’s daily activities and control into the sales process, potentially subverting the spirited sales culture. In The Wrong Hands, AI Can Be Turned Into A Micromanagement Tool It’s unfortunate, really, because […]

Huawei held its flagship Connect 2018 conference in Shanghai from October 10 to 12. The event, which featured more than 200 sessions, attracted over 25,000 visitors and more than 1,500 partners from around the world. By the end of 2017, Huawei’s annual revenue had exceeded US$92 billion — half of which comes from global markets […]

As of 2018, the market for contact center technology has fully shifted to cloud. The remaining outliers of demand are large, highly customized implementations that preserve legacy on-premises software or organizations that wish to maintain the technology inside their firewall. Agility, flexibility, and the ability to rapidly shift capacity are all key elements that AD&D […]

Feeling overwhelmed with all the data that your teams must wrangle before even getting to data science? Feeling like you have more than enough dashboards and tools? Feeling like you don’t have any more room in your complex data and analytics environment for yet another platform? Feeling like you can’t keep up with the exploding […]

In about a month, I will have the honor of presenting my research on “The Ethics Of AI: How To Avoid Harmful Bias And Discrimination” to attendees at CX Europe 2018. The event will take place in London on November 13 and 14 and will feature several of my esteemed analyst colleagues, as well as […]

Artificial intelligence is a big deal in marketing technology. Forrester sees strong potential in AI as an enabling technology for marketing, and it’s great to see many vendors embracing AI to enhance existing offerings and as the basis for new solutions. But for vendors, mastering AI technology alone isn’t enough to get to the top. […]

Nearly all CIO organizations struggle to optimize cloud consumption. It’s helpful that there is a growing set of tools to help you learn how to best leverage cloud platform services and how to identify when your use is suboptimal and overly costly. But this guidance would be far more effective if it could give you […]

Picture the following: You wake up from a fitful night of sleep feeling under the weather. From your sickbed, a voice assistant gathers your symptoms, accesses your patient history, and orders a prescription for you. But you want to talk to a human as well, so you initiate a video chat with your physician using […]