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Claudeforce: The Future of (Marketing) Work Is Chat

Gerry Murray, Roger Beharry Lall, Tapan Patel — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Salesforce’s Claudeforce partnership with Anthropic, and its 22.6% stock gain after August 27, 2026 earnings, shows agentic AI redistributing enterprise software value rather than eliminating it. Salesforce is betting that consumption revenue outpaces seat revenue as employees delegate work to AI. This IDC Perspective covers what this shift means for chief marketing officers (CMOs) deciding which applications to defend, renew, or replace as Claude, ChatGPT, and Copilot compete with SaaS platforms for the conversational UI layer.

"The future of marketing work is chat. The fight is over who owns the conversation and how much that position enables them to further encroach on conventional martech functionality," says Gerry Murray, research director on enterprise marketing applications and agents, IDC. Murray adds, "Partnerships between SaaS vendors and AI labs is something of a 'keep your enemies close' strategy, but it is also a strategic acceptance of the inevitable transformation of work."

Market Analysis Perspective: Worldwide Sales Productivity and Performance, 2026

Michelle Morgan — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Analysis Perspective provides insight into the current and future state of the sales productivity and performance market. It includes an overview of the current market landscape, a technology buyer perspective, a market outlook, and IDC's advice for technology suppliers/service providers.

"Salestech vendors have rushed 'agentic' onto every product page this year, but most of what ships still resembles workflow automation with a chat interface bolted on. Genuine autonomous action — an AI system that reliably prioritizes, negotiates, or closes without a rep double-checking its work — remains more road map than deployment." — Michelle Morgan, research director, AI-Enabled Sales, Customer Service, and Contact Center Strategies

Worldwide Healthcare Provider Go-to-Market Handbook, 2026

Jennifer Eaton, Nigel Wallis, Heriberto Roman — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation is designed to support technology vendors in building their industry-focused narratives and go-to-market strategies. It should be used to tailor marketing messaging to industry-specific business priorities, sharpen portfolios, and create sales campaigns that resonate with prospects and customers. It helps tech suppliers:

Align their company value propositions and messaging with key business priorities, challenges, and investment drivers in the healthcare industry.
Leverage the priorities and emerging business needs of existing customers and prospects to develop competitive messaging and campaign themes.
Showcase how their company's products and services solve concrete business challenges within this value chain.
Understand the relevance and investment horizon of key programs and use cases, map them with their company capabilities, and translate into go-to-market action plans.

Priorities, programs, and use cases discussed in this Industry Go-to-Market Handbook are selected by senior IDC analysts based on in-depth and ongoing IDC research and conversations with key stakeholders in the worldwide healthcare sector. Account-based actions need to consider that individual company strategic business priorities and initiatives might differ based on specific sub-industries or organizations' individual digital maturity.

"Patient-centered care sounds obvious until you examine how most clinical workflows are actually designed; around the institution, not the individual," says Jennifer Eaton, research director, IDC Healthcare Insights.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Agentic Marketing for B2C Enterprises 2026 Vendor Assessment

Gerry Murray — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC MarketScape evaluates agentic marketing platforms available to enterprise organizations and provides essential guidance for technology buyers in this segment. This study defines the market, evaluates vendors serving enterprise buyers, and assesses platforms against a broad definition of agentic AI. IDC finds that autonomy and system integration are largely solved problems in this market, while independent judgment and cross-agent coordination remain works in progress. Given the governance, ROI, and security scrutiny enterprise deployments face, IDC advises buyers to evaluate platforms as they would evaluate a new hire, with clear supervision, defined scope, and ongoing performance review.

"Enterprise buyers should scrutinize vendors' agentic marketing solutions on interoperability, governance, and road maps as well as on proprietary IP, best practices, data assets, and cost transparency because at scale, those are the defining differentiators," said Gerry Murray, research director, Enterprise Marketing Applications and Agents at IDC.

Klaviyo Closes Enterprise Capability Gaps, Repositions as Autonomous B2C CRM, and Adds $100+ Billion to its TAM

Gerry Murray, Roger Beharry Lall, Tapan Patel — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note assesses Klaviyo's K:BOS 2026 announcements, which close enterprise gaps and support a new $160 billion autonomous B2C CRM TAM. It also outlines what is needed to convert that TAM into revenue.

"Klaviyo can now match enterprise martech feature for feature. But in a world of technical parity, capturing share of its new $100 billion enterprise TAM will come down to go-to-market innovation, because feature/function is mostly table stakes," said Gerry Murray, Research Director, Enterprise Apps and Agents at IDC.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Agentic Marketing for Midmarket Organizations 2026 Vendor Assessment

Roger Beharry Lall — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC MarketScape evaluates agentic marketing platforms available to midsize organizations and provides essential guidance for technology leaders in this segment. Midsize marketing teams typically run several tools across content, campaigns, and channels acquired at different times for different reasons and are looking for platforms that can coordinate that sprawl rather than add to it. This study defines the market, evaluates vendors serving midsize buyers and assesses how well current platforms handle multi-agent coordination and independent learning across channels, which are the capabilities that most affect a growing marketing team's ability to scale without adding headcount. IDC finds meaningful progress on integration and orchestration since the 2025 assessment of this segment, alongside a persistent gap in agents that improve their own performance over time without manual retraining. Midsize buyers should weigh both dimensions carefully when selecting a platform built to grow with them.

"Midsize buyers want a platform priced for their budget, built for how a midsized team actually works, and simple enough that value shows up in the first quarter instead of the fifth," says Roger Beharry Lall, research director on advertising technologies and SMB marketing applications, IDC.

IDC Survey Spotlight: How Do B2B Buyers Across Market Segments Use Social Channels?

Sudhir Rajagopal — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight examines how B2B buyers across three company size segments, small business, midmarket, and large enterprise, use social and community platforms throughout the technology buying journey. Drawing on IDC’s May 2026 Tech Buyer Behavior Survey (n = 413), the analysis finds that while social media reach is nearly universal, with video (YouTube) the single-most used channel across all segments, the underlying purpose diverges by buyer purpose and company size. For marketing leaders and CMOs, the implication is to segment their social channel spend by both buyer segment and life-cycle stage in the buyer journey.

Rebuilding Marketing Content for AI-Orchestrated B2B Buyer Journeys

Sudhir Rajagopal, Tapan Patel — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how content architecture maturity, personalization granularity, and buying committee coverage shape the effectiveness of AI-driven buyer journey orchestration among B2B technology marketers in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Drawing on IDC's 2026 Barometer Survey (syndicated) of 400 marketing leaders and IDC's broader research on agentic AI, buyer behavior, and marketing operating models, this document provides advice for marketing leaders and CMOs navigating and investing in the orchestration of buyer journeys amid the rise of AI-mediated B2B marketing.

"Most marketing organizations are confident in their AI orchestration, but confidence and capability are not the same thing", said Sudhir Rajagopal, research director, IDC CMO Advisory. "Only a third of marketers can orchestrate content during the buyer journey across the full buying committee, which increasingly is led by AI agents. It is time for marketing to build and orchestrate content that an AI agent can act on."

市场份额：中国AI增强的销售管理型CRM市场份额，1H26

Wenting Xu — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

本IDC研究分析了2026年上半年中国AI增强的销售管理型客户关系管理（CRM）市场中领先供应商的市场份额。

围绕企业提升销售效率、改善客户经营和增强收入可预测性的需求，AI正在推动销售管理型CRM从以客户信息记录和销售流程管控为主的工具，向具备智能洞察、内容生成、预测分析和任务执行能力的销售管理平台演进。AI的应用价值也逐步从单点功能辅助，延伸至与客户数据、业务知识和销售工作流的深度融合。

IDC中国企业级软件研究领域高级研究经理徐文婷表示：“AI增强的销售管理型CRM的核心价值，在于将客户数据、行业知识与销售工作流深度融合，推动系统从过程记录与管控工具向智能决策与执行平台演进。未来，中国企业在选择AI增强的销售管理型CRM时，将更加关注AI能否解决实际销售问题、带来可量化的业务改善，而非单纯比较AI功能的丰富程度。”

How Company Size Shapes AI’s Impact on B2B Marketing

Sudhir Rajagopal, Roger Beharry Lall, Katie Evans, Supriya Deka — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective is a deeper dive into how AI’s impact on B2B technology marketing varies by company size. Using IDC’s 2026 Marketing Barometer Survey, IDC found that the variations and gaps between company sizes reflect structure, not capability. Each segment carries a distinct exposure: Small firms are expanding capabilities on a thin data foundation, midmarket is losing search traffic faster than its answer engine strategy can replace it, and large enterprises lack buyer visibility despite leading on AI discovery infrastructure. The document offers segment-specific budget and recommendations for CMOs.

“A high AI impact on marketing performance may not always be proof of a better strategy; it’s often proof of a more basic structure,” says Sudhir Rajagopal, research director, CMO Advisory Service, IDC. “Smaller organizations, unrealized technical debt, and more basic buyer signals can make an organization look further ahead on AI than it actually is. In prioritizing and sequencing marketing investments, CMOs must calibrate their existing performance against structural position, technical debt, and AEO visibility to see more sustainable AI returns in marketing.”