Age of the Customer
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Do You Champion The Marketers Who Champion Your Customers?
All B2B companies tout their focus on customers. But not all reflect customer obsession in their priorities, actions, and metrics. Call it “lip service” or “all hat, no cattle.” Data from Forrester’s new State Of Customer Retention, Growth, And Advocacy Survey, 2026 shows that customer marketers see the gap. Customer Value: Many Say It; Not […]
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Ant International’s AI Strategy: Fixing Payments Today, Building For Agents Tomorrow
Much of this year’s agentic payments discussion has focused on protocols. At its merchant-focused Voyage event on September 9 in Shanghai, Ant International took a broader view. Its senior executives argued that the most immediate AI opportunities lie in automating merchants’ existing payment and finance workflows. At the same time, the company is building the […]
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Meta Connect 2026: Does Pleasure Beat Privacy? Meta Bets It Does.
The subtext of Meta Connect 2026 was in some ways more interesting than the text: How much access are consumers, willing and unwilling, going to give Meta to their private lives — and at what price? Meta Connect 2026 launched an expected camera-free glasses product as well as a handheld device for accessing Muse, which […]
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Key Takeaways From Xendit’s Analyst Day
Payments companies often describe themselves as global platforms. But in Asia Pacific, global reach matters little if a provider can’t make local payments work reliably. That was my main takeaway from Xendit’s recent analyst day in Kuala Lumpur. The company presented a platform spanning payment acceptance, payouts, treasury, and embedded finance. It reported processing more […]
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Your Technology & Innovation Forum East Guide To Hudson Yards And Beyond
Attending Technology & Innovation Forum East? Make the most of your time in New York with our insider guide to Hudson Yards and beyond. Discover top coffee spots, dining destinations, networking venues, iconic attractions, and walkable experiences just steps from Convene 30 Hudson Yards.
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Your Buyers Are Asking AI. Will Your Content Answer Their Questions?
Visit the hub at B2B Forum EMEA to learn how Forrester AI, paired with Forrester’s Total Economic Impact™ content, can help marketers identify the questions shaping buyer preference and answer them with credible economic evidence.
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Your AI Productivity Gains Are Creating More Work
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke recently warned employees against tossing “AI slop grenades” to coworkers: using AI to generate something quickly, then shifting the burden of reviewing, interpreting, or fixing it to someone else. Marketing leaders should pay attention. It’s not enough to worry about AI slop reaching customers and burying editors, creative teams, and other […]
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Announcing The Forrester Wave™: External Threat Intelligence Service Providers, Q3 2026
Last week, Forrester published The Forrester Wave™: External Threat Intelligence Service Providers, Q3 2026. Since our last evaluation in 2023, the market has undergone a significant transformation. This transformation has been driven not only by the growing sophistication and breadth of threat intelligence requirements but also by the rapid adoption of agentic AI as organizations […]
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Elite B2C Marketing Processes Operate Like Spain’s National Soccer (Football) Teams
When Spain’s women’s and men’s national soccer teams won consecutive FIFA World Cup titles in 2023 and 2026, their victories were not just the result of a single brilliant goal over England and Argentina, respectively. La Roja’s historic back-to-back World Cup wins reflect a disciplined system ingrained early in Spain’s youth soccer academies: a clear […]
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The Future Of (Enterprise) Software
I have spent much of this summer working with my colleague Joe Cicman on a deceptively simple question: What happens to enterprise software when AI makes software creation abundant? Last week, Joe presented the first evolution of our thinking at Forrester’s Technology & Innovation Forum in Austin. Next week, I will bring the conversation to […]
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Paramount-WBD Settlement Leaves Consumers Bracing For Higher Prices
Seven months ago, Paramount outbid Netflix for Warner Bros. Discovery and set off one of the most dramatic merger battles Hollywood has seen in years. What followed was a real-world season of Succession: shareholder votes, global regulatory approvals, an antitrust lawsuit, a March 2027 trial date, failed settlement talks, public pressure campaigns, and threats to […]
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Will AI Eliminate Enterprise Architects?
Every few years, enterprise architecture (EA) faces an existential question. Agile development raised it. Cloud computing raised it. Product operating models raised it. Now AI raises it again. As generative AI and autonomous agents begin interpreting requirements, designing architectures, writing code, producing documentation, generating standards, and analyzing portfolios, architecture leaders are asking whether the profession itself […]
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Predictions 2027: Big Media Growth Engines Hit The Limit And Pivot
A decade of media growth is giving way to a period of reinvention. Forrester’s 2027 predictions reveal how leading media and technology firms will adapt as subscriptions slow, search evolves, and AI transforms consumer discovery and advertising.
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Frontier AI Labs Are Out Of Pace With The Realities Of Enterprise AI
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s essay this past weekend, “We Must Pace the Frontier,” argues that the AI industry should slow the pace of frontier model advancement until safety, oversight, and alignment mechanisms can catch up. His proposal includes embedded third-party evaluators inside AI labs, industrywide safety coordination, and possibly government-backed limits on AI capability development. […]
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Your Office Space Is Talking: Are You Listening?
For years, smart building conversations have centered on connected sensors, automated systems, and operational efficiency. But the conversation is shifting. As organizations juggle hybrid work, sustainability mandates, and cost pressure, they’re taking a harder look at a deceptively simple question: How should we use our physical space? That question sits at the center of our […]
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Takeaways From The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management And Analytics Solutions, Q3 2026
The Forrester Wave™: Customer Feedback Management And Analytics Solutions, Q3 2026 finds a market in transition. Just as the “Amazon effect” raised expectations for customer experiences, the “ChatGPT effect” is raising expectations for the software that helps organizations understand them. This is a deliberately selective Forrester Wave: With only a small set of vendors included, […]
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Most AI Products Fail Before They’re Built
While most organizations are deploying predictive, generative, and agentic AI, few can directly connect those investments to revenue, customer outcomes, or profitability. As AI becomes cheaper and easier to build, the quality of the problem being solved becomes the primary determinant of value. Teams that measure success by releases, features, or utilization risk falling into […]
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Seventy-Five Days After Launch, Open USD’s Payment Strategy Takes Shape
When Open Standard announced Open USD on June 30, 2026, the initiative quickly attracted attention in the payments and fintech industries. At launch, I argued in my blog post that Open USD was an important development but not yet a proven payment network. A strong roster of supporters can create momentum, but this does not […]
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Back To The (Contextual) Future: It’s Still A Core Component In Consumer Personalization
First, for some context: AI is creating a resurgence for “context” in the industry lexicon. Large language models rely on context to understand intent, resolve ambiguity, and generate accurate responses. As consumers and organizations adopt new AI technology, context plays a key role in creating relevant customer-brand interactions. Organizations don’t need to know the most about […]
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If Everyone Has AI, Where Will Advantage Come From?
The organizations that thrive won’t be those with the most AI. They’ll be the ones that best combine AI-generated insight with human experience and judgment to create customer value.
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