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Feb 26

Roundup of agentic AI forecasts and market estimates, 2026

Roundup of agentic AI forecasts and market estimates, 2026

Agentic AI spending is projected to reach $201.9 billion in 2026 (Gartner), overtaking chatbot spending by 2027.  Four independent firms size the standalone market at $7–8 billion with 40%+ CAGRs. But adoption lags the money: only 23% of organizations have scaled agent deployments (McKinsey), and 40% of projects face cancellation by 2027 (Gartner).

Fortune Business Insights projects $7.29 billion in 2025, reaching $139.19 billion by 2034 at 40.5% CAGR. Precedence Research sizes it at $7.55 billion in 2025, growing to $199.05 billion by 2034 at 43.84% CAGR. MarketsandMarkets puts the figure at $7.06 billion in 2025, reaching $93.20 billion by 2032 at 44.6% CAGR. Deloitte’s TMT Predictions 2025 estimates $8.5 billion in 2026, growing to $35 to $45 billion by 2030.

Every major forecast agrees on direction. None agrees on scale. The standalone agentic AI market lands between $7 billion and $8.5 billion. Gartner’s broader view, counting agentic capabilities embedded across enterprise software, reaches $201.9 billion in 2026. That 25x gap is not a contradiction. It is a measurement problem, and the takeaways below reflect both realities. The following are the key takeaways from agentic AI forecasts published in 2026 so far:

Key takeaways

Worldwide AI spending will reach $2.52 trillion in 2026, growing 44% year-over-year. That number jumped roughly $500 billion from the September forecast, which had pegged the market just above $2 trillion. Infrastructure takes $1.37 trillion, 54% of total spend. AI software follows at $452.5 billion, up 60%. AI services add $588.6 billion. AI-optimized servers alone account for $421.6 billion, growing to 49%. Gartner expects spending to grow by another 30% in 2027 and surpass $3 trillion. I have tracked these forecasts through multiple iterations. The revisions keep going in one direction. Source: Gartner press release, January 15, 2026

 

Gartner projects $4.71 trillion in global AI spending by 2029. The fastest growth isn’t in infrastructure. Synthetic data generation leads all categories at 178% CAGR, followed by the broader AI Data market at 155%. Agentic AI compounds at 119%, expanding from $15 billion to $753 billion by 2029. AI Infrastructure, the largest category by dollars, grows at just 29%. The money is following the bottlenecks. Source:  Gartner 4Q25: $4.71T AI Market Proves Agentic AI and Data Readiness Are the Only Race That Matters, Software Strategies Blog, January 22, 2026 Link: https://softwarestrategiesblog.com/2026/01/22/gartner-4q25-agentic-ai-data-readiness-4-71t-market/

 

The AI cybersecurity market is predicted to hit $51.3 billion in 2026, nearly doubling from $25.9 billion in 2025. But the category masks a structural imbalance. AI-amplified security, where AI defends the enterprise, captures 94.5% of spending at $48.5 billion. Securing AI, where the enterprise defends its own AI systems, gets $2.8 billion. Enterprises are investing 17x more in using AI as a security tool than in protecting the AI itself. Both sub-segments grow at similar CAGRs (74% vs. 72%), which means the dollar gap widens every year. By 2029, AI-amplified security reaches $160.4 billion, while securing AI hits just $11.6 billion. One is a tool. The other is the thing that needs protecting. Source: Gartner Forecasts Agentic AI Will Overtake Chatbot Spending by 2027, Software Strategies Blog, February 16, 2026 Link: https://softwarestrategiesblog.com/2026/02/16/gartner-forecasts-agentic-ai-overtakes-chatbot-spending-2027/

 

AI Data sits alone in the upper-right quadrant of Gartner’s spending map, compounding at 155% CAGR with 277% growth in 2026. AI Cybersecurity and AI Models cluster above 67% CAGR. AI Infrastructure anchors the chart as the largest bubble, but grows at just 29%. Global AI spending reaches $1.8 trillion in 2025 and $4.7 trillion by 2029. The acceleration is not in compute. It is in data readiness, security architecture, and agentic capabilities. By 2028, software with agentic capabilities crosses 50% of total application software spend, up from 2% in 2024. Non-agentic software spending starts declining in 2027. Source:Data Readiness and Security Are Driving AI’s $4.7 Trillion Run, Software Strategies Blog, December 22, 2025 Link: https://softwarestrategiesblog.com/2025/12/22/data-readiness-security-driving-ai-4-7-trillion/

Gartner’s AI spending forecast reaches $2.53 trillion in 2026 and $4.71 trillion by 2029. Eight markets. One pattern. AI Infrastructure dominates absolute dollars at $1.37 trillion in 2026 but grows at just 29% CAGR. AI Data, the smallest segment at $3.1 billion, compounds at 155%. AI Cybersecurity nearly doubles to $51.3 billion. AI Software hits $452.5 billion, growing 60% year-over-year as agentic capabilities reshape the category. The growth rates tell you where the bottlenecks are breaking. Source: Data Readiness and Security Are Driving AI’s $4.7 Trillion Run, Software Strategies Blog, December 22, 2025 Link: https://softwarestrategiesblog.com/2025/12/22/data-readiness-security-driving-ai-4-7-trillion/

Nearly nine in ten organizations now use AI in at least one business function, up from 78% a year ago, but nearly two-thirds have not begun scaling it across the enterprise. Only 6% qualify as high performers where AI contributes more than 5% to EBIT. Sixty-two percent of organizations are at least experimenting with AI agents, yet in no individual business function are more than 10% scaling them. High performers are three times more likely than peers to fundamentally redesign workflows and three times more likely to have senior leaders demonstrating ownership of AI initiatives. More than one-third of high performers commit over 20% of their digital budgets to AI, and about three-quarters have reached the scaling phase, versus one-third of other organizations. Source: McKinsey / QuantumBlack, The state of AI in 2025: Agents, innovation, and transformation, November 2025

Valued at $638.23 billion in 2024, the global AI market is projected to reach $3,680.47 billion by 2034, expanding to a CAGR of 19.20%. North America holds 31.80% market share. The software segment dominates at 51.40%, while machine learning leads by technology at 36.70%. Healthcare is expected to record the highest CAGR of 36.50% across end-use segments. Among regions, Asia-Pacific is expected to grow at 19.8% CAGR from 2025 to 2034, with AI projected to add up to $3 trillion to the region’s GDP by 2030, driven by national AI strategies in China, India, and Japan. Source: Precedence Research, AI Market Size, Growth & Trends, September 2025

Nearly $7 trillion. That’s the capital outlay data centers will require by 2030 to keep pace with demand for compute power. Of that, $5.2 trillion goes toward AI-ready facilities and $1.5 trillion toward traditional IT workloads. Global demand for data center capacity could almost triple by 2030, with about 70% of new demand coming from AI workloads. Three investment scenarios range from $3.7 trillion (constrained demand) to $7.9 trillion (accelerated demand, adding 205 incremental GW). The 60% majority of investment—$3.1 trillion—flows to technology developers and designers producing chips and computing hardware. Source: McKinsey, The cost of compute: A $7 trillion race to scale data centers, April 2025

Inference already consumed half of all AI compute in 2025. That number will grow to two-thirds in 2026 and reach 75% of all AI compute needs by 2030. Global data center capacity is projected to nearly double from 103 gigawatts to 200 GW by 2030, yet U.S. data centers already face a capacity shortfall exceeding 11 GW, with the cumulative gap expected to exceed 40 GW by 2028. North American data center capacity alone will increase eightfold, from 5.6 GW in 2024 to 44 GW by 2030. Operators are increasingly deploying edge facilities closer to end users to reduce latency as inference-dominated workloads drive a fundamental redesign of data center architectures. Source: Avid Solutions, 13 Data Center Growth Projections, January 2026

 

Generative AI could add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy, increasing the projected impact of all AI by 15 to 40%. About 75% of the value falls across four areas: customer operations, marketing and sales, software engineering, and R&D. Half of today’s work activities could be automated between 2030 and 2060, with a midpoint in 2045—roughly a decade earlier than previously estimated. When embedding effects in existing software are included, the total economic benefit rises to $6.1 trillion to $7.9 trillion annually. Source: McKinsey, The economic potential of generative AI, June 2023

The global AI market hit $294.16 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to $2,480.05 billion by 2034, at a CAGR of 26.60%. The Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) segment holds 18.90% market share, while healthcare is expected to record the highest CAGR of 36.50%. In the U.S. alone, the AI market was estimated at $146.09 billion in 2024 and is predicted to reach $851.46 billion by 2034. The number of AI companies funded globally in 2024 totaled 2,049, with U.S.-funded companies accounting for 1,143, signaling strong investor confidence in the sector’s expansion potential. Source: Fortune Business Insights, AI Market Size, Growth & Trends by 2034

Big Tech’s AI capex hit $405 billion in 2025, up from a $250 billion estimate at the start of the year. Sell-side analysts have underestimated AI spending every quarter for two years running. A decade ago, Big Tech’s trailing-twelve-month capex was $24 billion—15x less than today. AI data center costs are projected at $3 trillion to $8 trillion, with gigawatt capacity expected to grow 3.5x by 2030. Source: IO Fund, Big Tech’s $405B Bet, November 2025

The global AI market was valued at $371.71 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $2,407.02 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 30.6%. Hyperscalers accounted for 53% of chip purchases in 2023, spurring 156% market growth from 2023 to 2024. While demand from hyperscalers is expected to moderate, growth of 41% is still forecast from 2025 to 2026. Enterprises are moving from cloud reliance to in-house AI infrastructure investments, particularly for cost-effective inference solutions, as edge AI gains traction through AI-enabled PCs and mobile devices. Source: Markets and Markets, AI Market Report 2025-2032

At $602 billion projected for 2026, hyperscaler capex has entered uncharted territory. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta will each exceed $100 billion individually, pushing capital intensity to 45-57% of revenue. Total hyperscaler capex from 2025-2027 is projected at $1.15 trillion, more than double the $477 billion spent from 2022-2024. Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan suggest the technology sector may need to issue $1.5 trillion in new debt over the next few years to finance AI infrastructure construction. The sheer scale of debt issuance mirrors patterns seen during the fiber-optic buildout of the late 1990s. Source: Multiple sources compiled by Introl, January 2026

The number of software companies using consumption-based pricing more than doubled between 2015 and 2024, as AI introduces new variable costs that make traditional perpetual licenses obsolete. SaaS remains dominant, but the next wave is outcome-aligned pricing that scales with actual AI usage. Software businesses that successfully adopt consumption-based pricing aligned with usage and outcomes may be better positioned to capture AI-driven value and differentiate themselves in a rapidly evolving market where the cost of each AI inference adds a new variable to the P&L. Source: McKinsey, AI adjusts the software bill, January 27, 2026

Data center capacity needs for AI and non-AI workloads could almost triple by 2030, with AI capacity increasing 3.5 times and making up roughly 70% of the total. Under a continued-momentum scenario, total capacity demand rises from 82 GW in 2025 to 219 GW by 2030, with incremental AI capacity ranging from 13 GW in 2025 to 31 GW in 2030, totaling 124 GW of new AI capacity. Non-AI workloads grow from 38 GW to 64 GW over the same period. Average power densities in AI-ready data centers have more than doubled in just two years and are expected to rise nearly four times by 2027. Source: McKinsey, Data center demands (Week in Charts), May 2025

U.S. data-center spending exceeded half a trillion dollars in 2025. The U.S. and China drove a massive expansion in AI-related computing capacity through 2024, with the U.S. pulling further ahead in the first half of 2025. AI-related trade accounted for nearly half of all merchandise trade growth in that period, despite representing only 15% of total trade volume. The infrastructure boom is reshaping international commerce, with surging demand for servers, graphics cards, and related components essential to AI training and inference now a dominant force in global supply chains. Source: Federal Reserve Board, FEDS Notes: The Global Trade Effects of the AI Infrastructure Boom, February 2026

The generative AI market is expanding from $71.36 billion in 2025 to $890.59 billion by 2032, at a CAGR of 43.4%. North America accounted for 43.05% of global revenue in 2025. Text remains the dominant data modality due to its foundational role in enterprise workflows, while the services segment is gaining traction for scalability and cost-effectiveness. Foundation model delivery platforms verticalized adoption across industries, and the rapid scaling of AI-native infrastructure are the three key forces driving the market as of 2025. The 43.4% CAGR makes this one of the fastest-expanding technology subsegments in history. Source: MarketsandMarkets, Generative AI Market Report, Global Forecast to 2032

The generative AI market reached $37.89 billion in 2025 and is projected to hit $1.2 trillion by 2035, a 37% compound annual growth rate. Transformer architectures account for more than 42% of technology revenue, driven by text-to-image and text-to-video applications. Software captures over 65% of total revenue. North America holds 41% of the market. Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing region at a 27.6% CAGR through 2035. Financial services is expected to lead sector growth at 36.4%, fueled by fraud detection, risk management, and regulatory compliance demands. Source: Precedence Research, Generative AI Market Size, January 2026

GPUs captured 89% of AI processor revenue in 2025, but FPGA and ASIC alternatives are growing at a 17% CAGR through 2031. Hardware accounted for 68% of all AI infrastructure spending last year. North America held 40% of the market, backed by $52.7 billion in CHIPS Act grants and hyperscalers operating roughly 60% of global AI compute capacity. Liquid cooling reached 18% of AI server racks as power densities crossed 100 kilowatts per rack, the threshold where air cooling fails. Asia-Pacific is projected to grow fastest at 16.4% CAGR through 2031, driven by China’s $50 billion semiconductor fund and $15 billion in hyperscaler commitments across India. Source: Mordor Intelligence, AI Infrastructure Market Size, Trends & Growth Drivers 2031

Nearly one in four Americans has already made a purchase through AI. Morgan Stanley Research estimates agentic shoppers will drive $190 billion to $385 billion in U.S. e-commerce spending by 2030, capturing 10% to 20% of market share. Grocery and consumer packaged goods lead adoption, with 49% of AI-assisted buyers transacting in those categories. AI shopping agent users are projected to reach 126 million by 2030, up from near zero today, while traditional e-commerce users decline from 264 million to 149 million over the same period. Source: Morgan Stanley Research, Agentic Commerce Market Impact Outlook, December 2025 Link: https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/agentic-commerce-market-impact-outlook

Jun 21

10 Ways Enterprises Are Getting Results From AI Strategies

10 Ways Enterprises Are Getting Results From AI Strategies

  • One in 10 enterprises now use 10 or more AI applications; chatbots, process optimization, and fraud analysis lead a recent survey’s top use cases according to MMC Ventures.
  • 83% of IT leaders say AI & ML is transforming customer engagement, and 69% say it is transforming their business according to Salesforce Research.
  • IDC predicts spending on AI systems will reach $97.9B in 2023.

AI pilots are progressing into production based on their combined contributions to improving customer experience, stabilizing and increasing revenues, and reducing costs. The most successful AI use cases contribute to all three areas and deliver measurable results. Of the many use cases where AI is delivering proven value in enterprises today, the ten areas discussed below are notable for the measurable results they are providing.

What each of these ten use cases has in common is the accuracy and efficiency they can analyze and recommend actions based on real-time monitoring of customer interactions, production, and service processes. Enterprises who get AI right the first time build the underlying data structures and frameworks to support the advanced analytics, machine learning, and AI techniques that show the best potential to deliver value. There are various frameworks available, with BMC’s Autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE) encapsulating what enterprises need to scale out their AI pilots into production. What’s unique about BMC’s approach is its focus on delivering transcendent customer experiences by creating an ecosystem that uses technology to cater to every touchpoint on a customer’s journey, across any channel a customer chooses to interact with an enterprise on.

10 Areas Where AI Is Delivering Proven Value Today

Having progressed from pilot to production across many of the world’s leading enterprises, they’re great examples of where AI is delivering value today. The following are 10 areas where AI is delivering proven value in enterprises today

  • Customer feedback systems lead all implementations of AI-based self-service platforms. That’s consistent with the discussions I’ve had with manufacturing CEOs who are committed to Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs that also fuel their new product development plans. The best-run manufacturers are using AI to gain customer feedback better also to improve their configure-to-order product customization strategies as well. Mining contact center data while improving customer response times are working on AI platforms today. Source: Forrester study, AI-Infused Contact Centers Optimize Customer Experience Develop A Road Map Now For A Cognitive Contact Center.
  • McKinsey finds that AI is improving demand forecasting by reducing forecasting errors by 50% and reduce lost sales by 65% with better product availability. Supply chains are the lifeblood of any manufacturing business. McKinsey’s initial use case analysis is finding that AI can reduce costs related to transport and warehousing and supply chain administration by 5% to 10% and 25% to 40%, respectively. With AI, overall inventory reductions of 20% to 50% are possible. Source: Smartening up with Artificial Intelligence (AI) – What’s in it for Germany and its Industrial Sector? McKinsey & Company.

10 Ways Enterprises Are Getting Results From AI Strategies

  • The majority of CEOs and Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs) globally plan to use more AI within three years, with the U.S. leading all other nations at 73%. Over 63% of all CEOs and CHROs interviewed say that new technologies have a positive impact overall on their operations. CEOs and CHROs introducing AI into their enterprises are doing an effective job at change management, as the majority of employees, 54%, are less concerned about AI now that they see its benefits. C-level executives who are upskilling their employees by enabling them to have stronger digital dexterity skills stand a better chance of winning the war for talent. Source: Harris Interactive, in collaboration with Eightfold Talent Intelligence And Management Report 2019-2020 Report.

10 Ways Enterprises Are Getting Results From AI Strategies

  • AI is the foundation of the next generation of logistics technologies, with the most significant gains being made with advanced resource scheduling systems. AI-based techniques are the foundation of a broad spectrum of next-generation logistics and supply chain technologies now under development. The most significant gains are being made where AI can contribute to solving complex constraints, cost, and delivery problems manufacturers are facing today. For example, AI is providing insights into where automation can deliver the most significant scale advantages. Source: McKinsey & Company, Automation in logistics: Big opportunity, bigger uncertainty, April 2019. By Ashutosh Dekhne, Greg Hastings, John Murnane, and Florian Neuhaus.

10 Ways Enterprises Are Getting Results From AI Strategies

  • AI sees the most significant adoption by marketers working in $500M to $1B companies, with conversational AI for customer service as the most dominant. Businesses with between $500M to $1B lead all other revenue categories in the number and depth of AI adoption use cases. Just over 52% of small businesses with sales of $25M or less are using AI for predictive analytics for customer insights. It’s interesting to note that small companies are the leaders in AI spending, at 38.1%, to improve marketing ROI by optimizing marketing content and timing. Source: The CMO Survey: Highlights and Insights Report, February 2019. Duke University, Deloitte, and American Marketing Association. (71 pp., PDF, free, no opt-in).
  • A semiconductor manufacturer is combining smart, connected machines with AI to improve yield rates by 30% or more, while also optimizing fab operations and streamlining the entire production process. They’ve also been able to reduce supply chain forecasting errors by 50% and lost sales by 65% by having more accurate product availability, both attributable to insights gained from AI. They’re also automating quality testing using machine learning, increasing defect detection rates up to 90%. These are the kind of measurable results manufacturers look for when deciding if a new technology is going to deliver results or not. These and many other findings from the semiconductor’s interviews with McKinsey are in the study, Smartening up with Artificial Intelligence (AI) – What’s in it for Germany and its Industrial Sector? . The following graphic from the study illustrates the many ways AI and machine learning are improving semiconductor manufacturing.

10 Ways Enterprises Are Getting Results From AI Strategies

  • AI is making it possible to create propensity models by persona, and they are invaluable for predicting which customers will act on a bundling or pricing offer. By definition, propensity models rely on predictive analytics including machine learning to predict the probability a given customer will act on a bundling or pricing offer, e-mail campaign or other call-to-action leading to a purchase, upsell or cross-sell. Propensity models have proven to be very effective at increasing customer retention and reducing churn. Every business excelling at omnichannel today rely on propensity models to better predict how customers’ preferences and past behavior will lead to future purchases. The following is a dashboard that shows how propensity models work. Source: customer propensities dashboard is from TIBCO.
  • AI is reducing logistics costs by finding patterns in track-and-trace data captured using IoT-enabled sensors, contributing to $6M in annual savings. BCG recently looked at how a decentralized supply chain using track-and-trace applications could improve performance and reduce costs. They found that in a 30-node configuration, when blockchain is used to share data in real-time across a supplier network, combined with better analytics insight, cost savings of $6M a year is achievable. Source: Boston Consulting Group, Pairing Blockchain with IoT to Cut Supply Chain Costs, December 18, 2018, by Zia Yusuf, Akash Bhatia, Usama Gill, Maciej Kranz, Michelle Fleury, and Anoop Nannra.
  • Detecting and acting on inconsistent supplier quality levels and deliveries using AI-based applications is reducing the cost of bad quality across electronic, high-tech, and discrete manufacturing. Based on conversations with North American-based mid-tier manufacturers, the second most significant growth barrier they’re facing today is suppliers’ lack of consistent quality and delivery performance. Using AI, manufacturers can discover quickly who their best and worst suppliers are, and which production centers are most accurate in catching errors. Manufacturers are using dashboards much like the one below for applying machine learning to supplier quality, delivery, and consistency challenges. Source: Microsoft, Supplier Quality Analysis sample for Power BI: Take a tour.

10 Ways Enterprises Are Getting Results From AI Strategies

  • Optimizing Shop Floor Operations with Real-Time Monitoring and AI is in production at Hitachi today. Combining real-time monitoring and AI to optimize shop floor operations, providing insights into machine-level loads and production schedule performance, is now in production at Hitachi. Knowing in real-time how each machine’s load level impacts overall production schedule performance leads to better decisions managing each production run. Optimizing the best possible set of machines for a given production run is now possible using AI.  Source: Factories of the Future: How Symbiotic Production Systems, Real-Time Production Monitoring, Edge Analytics, and AI Are Making Factories Intelligent and Agile, Youichi Nonaka, Senior Chief Researcher, Hitachi R&D Group and Sudhanshu Gaur Director, Global Center for Social Innovation Hitachi America R&D.

10 Ways Enterprises Are Getting Results From AI Strategies

Additional reading:

15 examples of artificial intelligence in marketing, eConsultancy, February 28, 2019

4 Positive Effects of AI Use in Email Marketing, Statista, March 1, 2019

4 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Improve Your Marketing (Plus 10 Provider Suggestions), Forbes, Kate Harrison, January 20, 2019

Artificial Intelligence: The Next Frontier? McKinsey Global Institute (PDF, 80 pp., no opt-in)

Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Technological Disruption Ascends, Woodside Capital Partners. (PDF,

DHL Trend Research, Logistics Trend Radar, Version 2018/2019 (PDF, 55 pp., no opt-in)

2018 (43 pp., PDF, free, no opt-in).

Digital/McKinsey, Smartening up with Artificial Intelligence (AI) – What’s in it for Germany and its Industrial Sector? (PDF, 52 pp., no opt-in)

How To Win Tomorrow’s Car Buyers – Artificial Intelligence in Marketing & Sales, McKinsey Center for Future Mobility, McKinsey & Company. February 2019. (44 pp., PDF, free, no opt-in)

How Top Marketers Use Artificial Intelligence On-Demand Webinar with Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist, Salesforce and Meghann York, Director, Product Marketing, Salesforce

In-depth: Artificial Intelligence 2019, Statista Digital Market Outlook, February 2019 (client access reqd).

bes Insights and Quantcast Study (17 pp., PDF, free, opt-in),

Marketing & Sales Big Data, Analytics, and the Future of Marketing & Sales, (PDF, 60 pp., no opt-in), McKinsey & Company.

McKinsey & Company, Automation in logistics: Big opportunity, bigger uncertainty, April 2019. By Ashutosh Dekhne, Greg Hastings, John Murnane, and Florian Neuhaus

McKinsey & Company, Notes from the AI frontier: Modeling the impact of AI on the world economy, September 2018 By Jacques Bughin, Jeongmin Seong, James Manyika, Michael Chui, and Raoul Joshi

Papadopoulos, T., Gunasekaran, A., Dubey, R., & Fosso Wamba, S. (2017). Big data and analytics in operations and supply chain management: managerial aspects and practical challenges. Production Planning & Control, 28(11/12), 873-876.

Powerful pricing: The next frontier in apparel and fashion advanced analytics, McKinsey & Company, December 2018

Winning tomorrow’s car buyers using artificial intelligence in marketing and sales, McKinsey & Company, February 2019

World Economic Forum, Impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on Supply Chains (PDF, 22 pgs., no opt-in)

World Economic Forum, Supply Chain 4.0 Global Practices, and Lessons Learned for Latin America and the Caribbean (PDF, 44 pp., no opt-in)

Worldwide Spending on Artificial Intelligence Systems Will Grow to Nearly $35.8 Billion in 2019, According to New IDC Spending Guide, IDC; March 11, 2019

 

Apr 19

How To Reduce The Unemployment Gap With AI

How To Reduce The Unemployment Gap With AI

It’s time for AI startups to step up and use their formidable technology expertise in AI to help get more Americans back to work now.

Bottom Line: A.I.’s ability to predict and recommend job matches will help get more Americans back to work, helping to reduce the 22 million unemployed today.

One in ten Americans is out of work today based latest U.S. Department of Labor data. They’re primarily from the travel and hospitality, food services, and retail trade and manufacturing industries, with many other affected sectors. McKinsey & Company’s recent article, A new AI-powered network, is helping workers displaced by the coronavirus crisis provides context around the scope of challenges involved in closing the unemployment gap. McKinsey, Eightfold A.I., and the FMI – The Food Industry Association combined efforts to create the Talent Exchange, powered by Eightfold.ai in a matter of weeks. McKinsey insights across a broad base of industries to help Eightfold and FMI create the Talent Exchange in record time. “In talking with clients across the U.S., it became very clear that there is a huge labor mismatch, and individuals are being affected very differently—from retailers furloughing tens of thousands of workers to other organizations needing to hire more than 100,000 workers quickly. We’re excited to help bring a scalable offering to the market,” said McKinsey partner Andrew Davis. McKinsey and FMI collaborating with Eightfold speak volumes to how Americans are coming together to combat the COVID-19 fallout as a team.

And with the food & agriculture, transportation, and logistics industries considered essential, critical infrastructure by Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), demand for workers is more urgent than ever. Eightfold’s Talent Exchange launched last weekend and already has more than 600,000 jobs uploaded that employers need to fill and is available in 15 languages. Eightfold is making the Talent Exchange available free of charge through the COVID-19 epidemic. The Talent Exchange is also being extended to other industries and eco-systems, illustrating how the Eightfold A.I. platform can provide transferability of skills across roles and industries.

Getting Americans Back To Work Using A.I.

Earlier this week Eightfold, FMI – The Food Industry Association and Josh Bersin, the noted global research analyst, public speaker, and writer on many aspects of human resources and talent management, hosted the webinar, COVID-19: Helping the food industry on the front lines with A.I. It’s available to watch here and includes a walk-through of the Eightfold Talent Exchange. The following graphic explains how the Talent Exchange addresses the needs of downsizing companies, impacted workers and hiring companies:

How To Reduce The Unemployment Gap With AI

Eightfold’s Talent Exchange Is A Model For How To Use A.I. For Good

Eightfold’s Talent Exchange uses A.I. algorithms to match candidates with available roles, based on each individual’s skills and previous experience.

Current employers who have to furlough or lay off employees can invite employees to participate in the program. Eightfold also designed in a useful feature that enables employers to add lists of impacted employees and send them a link to register for the Exchange. Employers can view their entire impacted workforce in a single dashboard and can filter by role, department, or location to see details about the talent needs from hiring companies and how their impacted employees are getting placed in new roles. The following is the Talent Exchange dashboard  for current employers showing progress in placing employees with furlough and outplacement partners, including the number of offers accepted by each:

How To Reduce The Unemployment Gap With AI

Employees impacted by a furlough or lay-off can create and update profiles free on the Talent Exchange, defining their job preferences, skills, and experience. That’s invaluable data for hiring companies relying on the platform to make offers and fill positions quickly.  How current employers handle furloughs and lay-offs today will be their identity for years to come, a point John Bersin made during the webinar saying “employers who thrive in the future are going to build long-term relationships with employees today.” Employees receive the following when their current employer adds their name to the Eightfold Talent Exchange. The fictional Company Travel Air is used for this example:

Hiring companies see candidate matches generated by the Exchange, so they can contact these prospects or immediately offer them new jobs. Eightfold’s A.I. engineering teams have automated and personalized this contact as well, expediting the process even further. Hiring companies can add onboarding instructions to allow new hires to start as soon as they are ready and have real-time views of their hiring dashboard shown below:

How To Reduce The Unemployment Gap With AI

Conclusion

Combining A.I.’s innate strengths with H.R. and talent management professionals’ expertise and insights is closing the unemployment gap today. Employers furloughing or laying off employees need to look out for them and get their profile data on the Talent Exchange, helping them find new jobs with hiring companies. As was so well-said by Josh Bersin during the webinar this week, “smart employers should think of their hourly workers as talent, not fungible, replaceable bodies.” For hiring companies in a war for proven employees with talent today, that mindset is more important than ever.

Feb 27

10 Ways AI & Machine Learning Are Revolutionizing Omnichannel

Disney, Oasis, REI, Starbucks, Virgin Atlantic, and others excel at delivering omnichannel experiences using AI and machine learning to fine-tune their selling and service strategies. Source: iStock

Bottom Line: AI and machine learning are enabling omnichannel strategies to scale by providing insights into the changing needs and preferences of customers, creating customer journeys that scale, delivering consistent experiences.

For any omnichannel strategy to succeed, each customer touchpoint needs to be orchestrated as part of an overarching customer journey. That’s the only way to reduce and eventually eliminate customers’ perceptions of using one channel versus another. What makes omnichannel so challenging to excel at is the need to scale a variety of customer journeys in real-time as customers are also changing.

89% of customers used at least one digital channel to interact with their favorite brands and just 13% found the digital-physical experiences well aligned according to Accenture’s omnichannel study. AI and machine learning are being used to close these gaps with greater intelligence and knowledge. Omnichannel strategists are fine-tuning customer personas, measuring how customer journeys change over time, and more precisely define service strategies using AI and machine learning. Disney, Oasis, REI, Starbucks, Virgin Atlantic, and others excel at delivering omnichannel experiences using AI and machine learning for example.

Omnichannel leaders including Amazon use AI and machine learning to anticipate which customer personas prefer to speak with a live agent versus using self-service for example. McKinsey also found omnichannel customer care expectations fall into the three categories of speed and flexibility, reliability and transparency, and interaction and care. Omnichannel customer journeys designed deliver on each of these three categories excel and scale between automated systems and live agents as the following example from the McKinsey article, How to capture what the customer wants illustrate:

The foundation all great omnichannel strategies are based on precise customer personas, insight into how they are changing, and how supply chains and IT need to flex and change too. AI and machine learning are revolutionizing omnichannel on these three core dimensions with greater insight and contextual intelligence than ever before.

10 Ways AI & Machine Learning Are Revolutionizing Omnichannel

The following are 10 ways AI & machine learning are revolutionizing omnichannel strategies starting with customer personas, their expectations, and how customer care, IT infrastructure and supply chains need to stay responsive to grow.

  1. AI and machine learning are enabling brands, retailers and manufacturers to more precisely define customer personas, their buying preferences, and journeys. Leading omnichannel retailers are successfully using AI and machine learning today to personalize customer experiences to the persona level. They’re combining brand, event and product preferences, location data, content viewed, transaction histories and most of all, channel and communication preferences to create precise personas of each of their key customer segments.
  2. Achieving price optimization by persona is now possible using AI and machine learning, factoring in brand and channel preferences, previous purchase history, and price sensitivity. Brands, retailers, and manufacturers are saying that cloud-based price optimization and management apps are easier to use and more powerful based on rapid advances in AI and machine learning algorithms than ever before. The combination of easier to use, more powerful apps and the need to better manage and optimize omnichannel pricing is fueling rapid innovation in this area. The following example is from Microsoft Azure’s Interactive Pricing Analytics Pre-Configured Solution (PCS). Source: Azure Cortana Interactive Pricing Analytics Pre-Configured Solution.

  1. Capitalizing on insights gained from AI and machine learning, omnichannel leaders are redesigning IT infrastructure and integration so they can scale customer experiences. Succeeding with omnichannel takes an IT infrastructure capable of flexing quickly in response to change in customers’ preferences while providing scale to grow. Every area of a brand, retailer or manufacturer’s supply chain from their supplier onboarding, quality management and strategic sourcing to yard management, dock scheduling, manufacturing, and fulfillment need to be orchestrated around customers. Leaders include C3 Solutions who offers a web-based Yard Management System (YMS) and Dock Scheduling System that can integrate with ERP, Supply Chain Management (SCM), Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) and many others via APIs. The following graphic illustrates how omnichannel leaders orchestrate IT infrastructure to achieve greater growth. Source: Cognizant, The 2020 Customer Experience.

  1. Omnichannel leaders are relying on AI and machine learning to digitize their supply chains, enabling on-time performance, fueling faster revenue growth. For any omnichannel strategy to succeed, supply chains need to be designed to excel at time-to-market and time-to-customer performance at scale. 54% of retailers pursuing omnichannel strategies say that their main goal in digitizing their supply chains was to deliver greater customer experiences. 45% say faster speed to market is their primary goal in digitizing their supply chain by adding in AI and machine learning-driven intelligence. Source: Digitize Today To Future-Proof Tomorrow (PDF, 16 pp., opt-in).

  1. AI and machine learning algorithms are making it possible to create propensity models by persona, and they are invaluable for predicting which customers will act on a bundling or pricing offer. By definition propensity models rely on predictive analytics including machine learning to predict the probability a given customer will act on a bundling or pricing offer, e-mail campaign or other call-to-action leading to a purchase, upsell or cross-sell. Propensity models have proven to be very effective at increasing customer retention and reducing churn. Every business excelling at omnichannel today rely on propensity models to better predict how customers’ preferences and past behavior will lead to future purchases. The following is a dashboard that shows how propensity models work. Source: customer propensities dashboard is from TIBCO.

  1. Combining machine learning-based pattern matching with a product-based recommendation engine is leading to the development of mobile-based apps where shoppers can virtually try on garments they’re interested in buying. Machine learning excels at pattern recognition, and AI is well-suited for creating recommendation engines, which are together leading to a new generation of shopping apps where customers can virtually try on any garment. The app learns what shoppers most prefer and also evaluates image quality in real-time, and then recommends either purchase online or in a store. Source: Capgemini, Building The Retail Superstar: How unleashing AI across functions offers a multi-billion dollar opportunity.

  1. 56% of brands and retailers say that order track-and-traceability strengthened with AI and machine learning is essential to delivering excellent customer experiences. Order tracking across each channel combined with predictions of allocation and out-of-stock conditions using AI and machine learning is reducing operating risks today. AI-driven track-and-trace is invaluable in finding where there are process inefficiencies that slow down time-to-market and time-to-customer. Source: Digitize Today To Future-Proof Tomorrow (PDF, 16 pp., opt-in).
  2. Gartner predicts that by 2025, customer service organizations who embed AI in their customer engagement center platforms will increase operational efficiencies by 25%, revolutionizing customer care in the process. Customer service is often where omnichannel strategies fail due to lack of real-time contextual data and insight. There’s an abundance of use cases in customer service where AI and machine learning can improve overall omnichannel performance. Amazon has taken the lead on using AI and machine learning to decide when a given customer persona needs to speak with a live agent. Comparable strategies can also be created for improving Intelligent Agents, Virtual Personal Assistants, Chatbot and Natural Language (NLP) performance.  There’s also the opportunity to improve knowledge management, content discovery and improve field service routing and support.
  3. AI and machine learning are improving marketing and selling effectiveness by being able to track purchase decisions back to campaigns by channel and understand why specific personas purchased while others didn’t. Marketing is already analytically driven, and with the rapid advances in AI and machine learning, markets will for the first time be able to isolate why and where their omnichannel strategies are succeeding or failing. By using machine learning to qualify the further customer and prospect lists using relevant data from the web, predictive models including machine learning can better predict ideal customer profiles. Each omnichannel sales lead’s predictive score becomes a better predictor of potential new sales, helping sales prioritize time, sales efforts and selling strategies.
  4. Predictive content analytics powered by AI and machine learning are improving sales close rates by predicting which content will lead a customer to buy. Analyzing previous prospect and buyer behavior by persona using machine learning provides insights into which content needs to be personalized and presented when to get a sale. Predictive content analytics is proving to be very effective in B2B selling scenarios, and are scaling into consumer products as well

Feb 24

What IoT Leaders Do To Drive Greater Results

  • IoT Leaders are achieving cost and revenue gains of at least 15% or more, while laggards see less than 5%.
  • Pursuing 80% more IoT use cases compared to their peers, IoT Leaders are progressing faster down the learning curve of monetizing their application areas.
  • IoT Leaders anticipate that their IoT use cases will boost their gross profits by 13% over the next three years, three times as much as IoT laggards.

What IoT leaders do to excel and drive greater results compared to their peers is explored in the recent McKinsey report, What separates leaders from laggards in the Internet of Things. The study is based on interviews with 300 IoT executive-level practitioners from companies with more than $500M revenues which are implementing large-scale IoT strategies with projects that have progressed from pilot to production. Enterprises from 11 major industry segments from Canada, China, Germany, and the United States were included in the survey.

McKinsey found 16% of enterprises have IoT programs in production, delivering aggregate cost and revenue impacts of at least 15%. The study also found 16% of enterprises are lagging, attaining aggregate revenue and cost improvements of less than 5%. The following graphic compares companies by the level of financial impact from IoT initiatives:

Nine practices differentiate IoT Leaders from laggards, and the study provides a fascinating look into each based on the survey data. Key insights into IoT Leader’s practice areas is provided here:

  • Leaders are more aggressive about pursuing a greater number, scope, and variety of IoT applications and use cases than their less successful peers. What IoT Leaders learn quickly is how steep the IoT learning curve is, and how it’s essential to run as many IoT pilots as possible to learn more. Leaders discover the first 15 or so IoT use cases typically have a modest payback, with the average payback rising until approximately 30 use cases have been achieved. IoT Leaders anticipate that their IoT use cases will boost their gross profits by 13% over the next three years, three times as much as IoT laggards. The following graphic illustrates the financial impact per IoT use case by the cumulative number of IoT use cases enterprises initiate.

  • Leaders are more willing than their peers to change business processes to unlock IoT’s value. McKinsey found IoT Leaders are three times more likely than their peers to say that managing changes to business processes is one of the three most important capabilities for implementing IoT. CEOs who champion their company’s IoT initiatives make strong contributions in this area, removing barriers and roadblocks quickly to keep IoT programs moving forward.
  • Leaders design, pilot and move to production IoT use cases that rely on advanced endpoints far more than their peers. McKinsey finds that IoT Leaders are more visionary and aggressive than peers in developing applications with advanced endpoints.  Leaders are gaining expertise and mastery of how to creatively use advanced endpoints today, reporting higher levels of satisfaction and positive results.

  • Leaders clearly define how IoT will create value and excel in building effective business cases. McKinsey found that IoT Leaders are 75% more likely than their peers to cite the preparation of a strong business case as a critical success factor for their IoT programs. The study’s respondents who have an IoT vision that includes a strong value proposition, a proven delivery model, and a business model that drives revenue are getting results faster than their peers. 35% of Leaders rate the importance of “strong business case and vision for value creation” as one of the top three success factors versus 20% of laggards. Leaders leave nothing to chance when it comes to defining how IoT will deliver business value either in the form of greater revenue or reduced costs.

  • A CEO’s involvement and support are essential for any enterprise to succeed with  IoT. Based on personal experience with IoT pilots, C-level executives are indispensable in removing barriers and making process-level changes necessary for success. 72% of the surveyed executives agree. A vital catalyst of any enterprise succeeding with IoT is a clear, unequivocal time commitment on the part of the CEO. Enterprises in the Leaders quintile were 2.4 more likely than laggards to report that their CEO serves as the champion of IoT efforts as the following graphic illustrates:

  • Leaders credit strong alignment with IoT strategies and priorities enterprise-wide as a critical factor in their success. IoT initiatives and pilots on their way to production require executives, managers, and frontline workers to learn fresh skills and collaborate across business and functional boundaries in new ways. Enterprises need to have a strong unifying vision of where they’re going with IoT, with the CEO championing the change management required to make sure they succeed.
  • Leaders begin by adding IoT capability to existing products and services first. McKinsey found that Leaders are three times more likely than their peers to make their top priority adding IoT capabilities to existing products. They focus on how to turn the current scale they’ve achieved with suppliers, selling and service networks into a formidable competitive advantage. They’re also more adept at cross-selling and up-selling IoT-enabled products by capitalizing on current customer relationships. The following graphic compares enterprises’ single highest-priority IoT effort:

  • Leaders excel at tapping into, scaling and relying on an ecosystem of partners for innovation versus doing it all themselves. McKinsey finds that IoT Leaders excel at scaling their partner ecosystems faster and more strategically than their peers. IoT Leaders also rely more on partners for the latest technology innovations instead of attempting to create them entirely on their own. They’re also deliberately choosing IoT platforms that support third-party developers and the advanced endpoints as the graphic below shows:

  • Leaders prepare for cyber attacks, so they don’t slow things down. McKinsey found that 30% of enterprises from both IoT Leaders and their peers say that they’ve experienced cyber attacks that have resulted in high to severe damage. 57% of Leaders had been the target of cyber attacks compared to 44% of their peers. The higher number of cyber attacks happening for Leaders is due to the broader threat surface their many pilots, and production-level use cases create. The more distributed and varied IoT use cases are the greater the risk of privileged credential abuse as well. Thwarting privileged credential abuse needs to start with a least privilege access approach, minimizing each attack surface, improving audit and compliance visibility while reducing risk, complexity, and costs. Leaders in Zero Trust include Centrify, MobileIron, Palo Alto Networks, and others.