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Harnessing AI for Scalable Sales Management Success

Michelle Morgan — Wed, 29 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective highlights the challenges sales managers face, such as overwhelming workloads and complex sales processes, and emphasizes the role of AI in enhancing sales management. It discusses how AI can provide personalized training, automate administrative tasks, and offer data-driven insights to improve efficiency and decision-making. The document advises technology buyers to consider organizational culture, leadership buy-in, and data readiness when integrating AI into sales operations to navigate the complexities of managing growing sales teams effectively.

"In the fast-paced world of sales, managers are often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data and tasks," says Michelle Morgan, research manager, IDC's Sales Force Productivity and Performance. "AI offers a lifeline, helping them navigate the complexity with precision and efficiency, turning chaos into opportunity."

EU AI Act: Summary of Potential Impacts on Digital Commerce, Experience Software, and CX Process Design

Heather Hershey — Tue, 28 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective provides a comprehensive overview of the EU AI Act, detailing its phased implementation, compliance requirements, and penalties for noncompliance. Scheduled to take effect in 2024, the Act classifies AI systems into four risk categories — unacceptable, high, limited, and minimal risk — each with specific regulatory requirements aimed at safeguarding user rights and safety. The document highlights the significant implications for digital commerce, projecting the risk profiles for various applications such as ecommerce platforms, digital experience platforms, and customer data platforms. It meticulously outlines the compliance obligations for AI applications, emphasizing transparency, especially in AI-driven content modifications and data processing. This analysis serves as a crucial guide for businesses to prepare for the upcoming regulations, ensuring that their AI systems align with the EU's stringent standards for safety, transparency, and ethical usage.

"With the EU AI Act, the stakes for noncompliance have never been higher," says Heather Hershey, research director, Worldwide Digital Commerce at IDC. "Fines reaching up to 6% of total worldwide annual turnover can be potentially added to penalties from existing GDPR, DMA, and DSA legislation with catastrophic impacts on the bottom line of global enterprise business. CX in the EU will need to incorporate regulatory compliance responsibilities with the art and science of experience delivery and design. This evolution underscores the need for an airtight compliance strategy, turning what was once a back-end concern into a boardroom priority."

IDC's 2024 Tech Marketing Investment Guide for Planning: Benchmarks, Key Performance Indicators, and CMO Priorities

Laurie Buczek — Tue, 28 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Special Study offers chief marketing officers (CMOs), their leadership teams, and their C-suite colleagues insights gained from the results of IDC's 2023 Tech Marketing Spend Benchmark Survey. The extensive study is in its 21st year and provides evidence-based quantitative insight for marketing planning, performance, and productivity management and transformation into the next era marketing powerhouse.

The study also gathers key performance indicators across overall investment allocated to marketing and the breakdown of marketing program and staff spending. The Tech Marketing Investment Planner helps marketing leaders answer critical questions including: How much should the company invest in marketing? What are my peers, the disrupters, and industry leaders doing? What new skill sets and competencies do I need? How should I allocate my budget to maximize outcomes?

"We are moving into the next era of digital business. Marketing's playbook is quickly changing to enable precision marketing, shifting to automate and dynamically deliver the content and engagement buyers expect," says Laurie Buczek, VP of CMO Advisory Practice at IDC. "Maintaining a prioritized investment in marketing is critical to support a firm's business growth objectives."

Industry Market Trends: Worldwide Apparel, Footwear, and Accessories Retail, 2024

Cristiano Quattrini, Filippo Battaini — Mon, 27 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation provides the Worldwide Apparel, Footwear, and Accessories Retail Market Trends 2024 Report, which aims to provide technology vendors with an overview of the key business trends shaping the global retail industry in the apparel, footwear, and accessories subsegment in 2024. Technology vendor executives in marketing, sales, product strategy, market intelligence, and channel management can leverage insights from this report as a starting point to organize their activities.

生成式AI改变营销范式

Anne Cheng, Yanxia Lu — Fri, 24 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT

“元年”之后，中国生成式AI产业生态日渐明晰，生成式AI在各个生产效率提升、业务职能和行业特定的应用场景中创造无限可能。当前，生成式AI在各个行业已得到初步探索，应用层创新将成为产业持续发展的驱动力。此报告重点分析了生成式AI优先落地的业务环节之一——营销环节，包括重点技术供应商发展动态与最佳实践案例，为技术供应商制定市场策略及行业用户选型作为参考。

IDC中国研究经理程荫表示：“营销场景是生成式AI优先落地的业务环节之一，内容创意领域渗透率较高，未来生成式AI将会全面渗透到渠道运营&转化场景、广告投放场景、营销策略场景、营销优化和客户分析场景。”

GenAI Use Cases — Moving the Needle

Holly Muscolino — Wed, 15 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT

These event proceedings were presented at the IDC Directions conferences in Boston and San Jose in March and April 2024.

Your organization may already be experimenting with generative AI, or perhaps you are just jumping in. Clearly there are many opportunities to deploy GenAI for improved business outcomes, but where should you begin? Which use cases will move the needle? This Lunch & Learn Session will provide an overview of key functional and industry use cases, as identified by recent C-suite research and a multidisciplinary/multiregional team of IDC analysts. This could be the inspiration that you need!

Point-of-Interest Data: The Essential Reference

Marlanna Bozicevich, Lynne Schneider — Fri, 10 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation reveals how point-of-interest (POI) and places data is increasingly becoming a pivotal resource across various industries, offering a wealth of information that can significantly enhance decision-making processes and strategic planning. The essence of POI/places data lies in its ability to amalgamate diverse sources of information into a centralized repository, thereby enabling businesses to generate insightful place- and mobility-based analytics. This data not only is versatile but also varies greatly depending on the provider, which underscores the importance of understanding the specific offerings and capabilities of different vendors.

The presentation includes important questions to consider when evaluating vendors. It also emphasizes the importance of selecting the right POI data provider based on data reliability, coverage, and delivery methods to optimize business strategies and decision-making processes.

Digital Asset Management Serves Marketing Use Cases and Houses a Fraction of Rich Media in the Organization

Marci Maddox — Thu, 09 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight presents key use cases for digital media from IDC's March 2024 Digital Asset Management QuickPoll Survey and showcases the amount of digital media stored in digital asset management (DAM) systems.

"While marketing teams most often are the ones to use a digital asset management system, a large percentage of rich media sits outside the DAM," states Marci Maddox, research vice president, Digital Experience Strategies at IDC. "This should raise concerns for organizations that do not fully use the DAM to manage risk and properly reuse assets and that incur brand inconsistency with media stored on local or corporate shared drives."

Highlights, Insights, and Recommendations from Adobe Summit 2024

Tue, 07 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective is a collaborative effort that highlights many of the key announcements, topics, and themes from Adobe's 2024 Summit event.

"As expected, the primary topic at Adobe's 2024 Summit was GenAI," said Alan Webber, program vice president, Digital Platforms and Ecosystems at IDC. "But there was so much more on how AI is shifting the whole customer engagement and customer experience landscape, including in advertising, marketing, content creation, services, and so forth."

Generative AI–Enabled Martech Adoption Trends Across SMB Organizations

Roger Beharry Lall — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey presentation analyzes responses from line-of-business leaders with martech responsibilities in organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees (i.e. small and medium-sized businesses — SMBs). This IDC QuickPoll Survey on AI-enabled marketing focuses on SMB organizations' current plans, challenges, and expectations regarding the utilization of generative AI (GenAI).

Conducted online during March 2024, the survey (n = 103) gathers information about SMBs' perceptions and strategies concerning generative AI enablement of the martech stack. These findings shed light on the unique challenges and opportunities SMBs currently face as they enter the AI everywhere age.