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Best Practices in Leveraging AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI for Retail Operational Workflows

Cristiano Quattrini, Margot Juros — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC PeerScape identifies best practices for retailers seeking to apply agentic AI to operational workflows. It focuses on four common challenges: orchestrating fragmented retail data and processes, embedding AI into frontline work, using AI to improve inventory and fresh-product decisions, and governing autonomous actions in sensitive operational environments.

Retailers are entering a phase in which the competitive value of AI depends less on experimentation and more on operationalization. The issue is not whether retailers can build pilots, but whether they can connect agents to the data, systems, teams, and controls required to influence day-to-day decisions. Walmart’s development of Wally illustrates the emerging use of agentic capabilities for merchandising and inventory decisions. Marks & Spencer’s rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot illustrates how GenAI can improve frontline productivity and decision support. Carrefour’s use of AI for supply chain and fresh-product planning shows the value of advanced forecasting and optimization, while Amazon’s use of multimodal AI for fulfillment quality and compliance demonstrates the potential of AI-enabled operational automation. Together, these examples show how retailers are building the foundations for more autonomous and agentic operational workflows.

The practices discussed in this PeerScape show that agentic AI succeeds when it is deployed around clear operating problems, when users understand its role, when workflows include human oversight, and when retailers measure outcomes such as labor productivity, stock availability, waste reduction, faster decision cycles, improved customer service, and lower operational risk.

“Agentic AI’s real value emerges when it becomes part of the operating model, connecting signals, decisions, actions, and accountability across stores, supply chains, commerce, and customer service. Retailers should start with workflows where AI can reduce decision latency, improve consistency, and free teams from repetitive coordination work while keeping humans responsible for judgment, escalation, and customer impact,” says Cristiano Quattrini, senior associate advisor, IDC Retail Insights.

Government Scrutiny of Anthropic's Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6: A Minimalist Framework for Frontier AI Regulation

Arnal Dayaratna — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The U.S. government's decision to restrict access to Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5 illustrates a new phase in frontier AI governance in which governments directly influence model availability. This phase is characterized by continuous government oversight of frontier models, as exemplified by the subsequent restrictions placed on GPT-5.6 before its public release. In recognition of this new era, this IDC Link builds on Anthropic's cyberjailbreak severity framework to propose a broader minimalist approach to frontier AI regulation. The framework addresses capability risk, access risk, and market-structure risk while confining government intervention to risks with demonstrable national consequences.

IBM, Oakridge National Labs, and Cleveland Clinic Model Fusion Energy Materials, Demonstrating Enterprise Potential For Complex Scientific Computing

Heather West, PhD — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

IBM's demonstration of a hybrid quantum-classical workflow to model fusion reactor materials provides further evidence that quantum computing is progressing beyond hardware experimentation toward solving classes of computational problems that remain difficult or impractical for classical computing alone. For enterprises, the announcement signals that quantum computing is beginning to validate real-world workload categories, including advanced modeling, simulation, and materials discovery, that could become important sources of competitive differentiation as the technology and software ecosystem mature.

IDC Market Glance: Database Management Systems, 3Q26

Devin Pratt — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Glance presents a concise current-state view of the database management systems market, defined by breadth of control rather than by database engines alone. As enterprises modernize data environments across structured, semistructured, and unstructured data, differentiation is shifting toward vendors that can combine data persistence, movement, quality, metadata, and governed sharing across heterogeneous architectures. The taxonomy spans database management systems, database administration and development tools, and data integration and intelligence software, with competition increasingly playing out at the platform and control layer. Relational systems remain the foundation, while NoSQL, graph, in-memory shared data managers, and data lake management systems anchor defined roles. Business executives, product managers, and market insights or analyst relations professionals can use this view to assess market, business, and partnership opportunities and to identify where their organization fits within the competitive landscape.

“This market is consolidating around control, not engines. The platforms that win the next cycle will be the ones that make a fragmented estate behave like one governed system,” says Devin Pratt, research director, Data Management, IDC.

IDC Market Glance: Energy Flexibility Software Ecosystem, 2Q26

Jean-François Segalotto, Gaia Gallotti — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Glance provides the segments and subsegments of the energy flexibility software ecosystem. The proliferation of distributed energy resources, acceleration of electrification, and greater need for energy efficiency have significantly expanded and reshaped this ecosystem. Different systems and platforms serve different functions in this increasingly complex landscape, making it imperative for technology buyers to understand which solutions support which use cases.

“The energy flexibility software ecosystem is at an inflection point, moving from a patchwork of standalone pilots and narrow demand response programs to integrated platforms that can orchestrate distributed assets at industrial scale across markets, grid levels, and program types. As network congestion intensifies and affordability concerns reshape end-customer engagement with flexibility, the best-positioned vendors will be those that combine network-aware orchestration, AI-enabled and increasingly agentic optimization, and clear participant value. This will be critical in making flexibility financially tangible for households and businesses as well as operationally useful for the grid,” says Jean-François Segalotto, senior associate advisor, IDC Energy Insights.

IDC Survey Spotlight: Which Application Workloads Do U.S. Enterprises Most Want to Use AI to Support and Augment Decision-Making?

Peter Marston — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight provides a view on enterprise sentiments for using artificial intelligence (AI) to support decision-making with application workloads in the United States. This document contains data from IDC’s August 2025 Application Services Survey. IDC’s Worldwide Intelligent Application Services practice conducted this survey to understand enterprise preferences for utilizing AI as part of and to augment application services. The overall goal of the survey was to identify how organizations’ preferences around application development and life-cycle management are evolving through the utilization of AI, and how application service providers can align their services offerings to address varied customer needs.

“Application services providers should understand how buyer organizations in the United States seek to leverage AI as part of application life-cycle management and business process decision-making to better support evolving customer needs as well as maintain deeper customer relationships,” explained Pete Marston, senior research director, Worldwide Intelligent Application Services at IDC.

IDC Survey: How Enterprises Are Leveraging GenAI Solutions for F&A Business Process Services

Sreenivas Duvvuri Venkata — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey examines how worldwide enterprises are leveraging, evaluating, or planning to leverage generative AI (GenAI) solutions for finance and accounting (F&A) business process services delivered by third-party providers. It explores GenAI adoption and spending plans, business priorities, operational challenges, process-level use cases, governance and risk concerns, provider requirements, finance transformation initiatives, and emerging interest in agentic AI. The findings in this IDC Survey are based on IDC’s 2025 Worldwide Business Process Outsourcing Services Survey and highlight how enterprises are approaching GenAI adoption in F&A with an emphasis on operational efficiency, governance, and measurable business value.

Market Forecast: Worldwide Cloud Application Deployment Platforms Software Forecast, 2026–2030

Matthew Flug — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation provides a forecast for the worldwide cloud application deployment platforms (CADPs) software market for 2026–2030, including regional and deployment-based breakdowns. It examines the key drivers and inhibitors shaping growth over the forecast period, with particular attention to the role of application platforms in enabling the development, deployment, and governance of AI-powered applications and agents. Market data is drawn from IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker.

“AI is fundamentally expanding what organizations require from application platforms. The need to deploy AI securely, connect proprietary data to intelligent applications, and bring agentic workloads to production at scale is creating significant opportunity for CADPs and significant pressure on vendors to deliver. Organizations that find commercial platforms insufficiently extensible or unable to meet their security requirements will increasingly consider building their own. Vendors that address these concerns directly, particularly around data integration and observable, governed agentic deployments, will be best positioned to capture the opportunity AI presents.” — Matthew Flug, research manager, Intelligent Application Modernization and Deployment Platforms, IDC

SAP Sapphire 2026: The Implications of an Autonomous Enterprise for Manufacturing, Life Sciences, and Supply Chain

Simon Ellis, Jeffrey Hojlo, Stephanie Krishnan, Nimita Limaye — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note explores the announcements, themes, and implications from SAP Sapphire 2026, held in Orlando in May.

“While AI generally, and agentic AI specifically, is reshaping their business landscape, manufacturing and life sciences operations and supply chain organizations must think more measurably about agentic AI outcomes,” says Simon Ellis, group VP, IDC Manufacturing and Supply Chain. “SAP’s operations and supply chain leaders clearly appreciate the need to be able to articulate measurable outcomes and clear monetizable benefits from AI tools and applications.”

Twilio Analyst Summit and SIGNAL 2026: Unveiling Twilio’s Conversations Layer for the Agentic Era

Hayley Sutherland — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note summarizes the major announcements, customer and partner session highlights, and analyst observations from Twilio’s Analyst Summit (May 5) and SIGNAL 2026 conference (May 6–7) in San Francisco, California. It covers the new Conversations Layer platform capabilities, key learnings from customer panels and partner sessions, and IDC’s assessment of the market implications for conversational AI.