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Agents at Work: Salesforce CNX26 and What the Agentic Platform Looks Like in Production

Dorothy Creamer — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective discusses Salesforce Connections 2026 (CNX26) and what the agentic platform looks like in production. At CNX26, Salesforce demonstrated an agentic enterprise platform spanning marketing, commerce, and service on its Customer 360 foundation. The June release for Agentforce Commerce and the acquisitions of Cimulate and Contentful extend that scope for retail, hospitality, and travel operators, adding composable commerce, intent-aware search, and enterprise content on a unified architecture. The primary challenge for buyers is not platform selection but the data readiness and organizational work that must precede deployment.

“Salesforce built its CNX26 presence around a unified story for agentic commerce backed by live production evidence. This refresh provides a pathway for intent-aware search, dynamic content, and composable storefronts, giving retail, hospitality, and travel operators a credible entry to the conversational, contextual commerce experience guests increasingly expect,” says Dorothy Creamer, senior research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Strategies, IDC. “What the platform does not provide is a shortcut around data quality. The strategic message for hospitality and travel operators is clear: Get your guest and transaction data unified, because the platform is ready to use it.”

Certinia Acquires Moonnox, Creating Digital AI Value: Professional Services Automation Platform with AI Architected at the Core

Mickey North Rizza — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Today, Certinia, an AI-powered Professional Services Automation (PSA) vendor, announced it has acquired Moonnox, an AI-native services delivery platform purpose built for the professional services sector. This combination of both an AI-powered PSA vendor and an AI-native services platform enables Certinia to bring even more value with its systems of records of PSA, Financial Management, and Customer Success Cloud Services, through the extension of Certinia's AI System of Action, called Veda, enabling Certinia to become a platform that powers AI-native services with AI architected as the core customer delivery mechanism.

Flexible Workforce Readiness, Planning, and Compliance in Focus for Quinyx at Navigate 2026

Zachary Chertok — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study showcases how Quinyx, at Quinyx Navigate 2026, took a strong focus on responsible, responsive, and accurately rooted AI while guaranteeing regulatory and compliance updates to back up newly released capabilities. The vendor’s focus is a strong play in an otherwise mature WFM market, as Quinyx proved its capabilities on stage with clients while further reinforcing regulatory readiness owing to its European roots. Advancing into compliance centricity as a foundation to drive its agentic capabilities into scheduling and forecasting positions Quinyx well to support its clients’ growing appetites for growth through new market exposure while managing and reducing their risks of error and cost exposure.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Enabled Order Orchestration and Fulfillment Applications for Retail and B2C 2026 Vendor Assessment

Ornella Urso — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC MarketScape provides a vendor assessment of worldwide AI-enabled order orchestration and fulfillment applications for retail and B2C and B2C for 2026. Order orchestration and fulfillment has become a competitive capability rather than a routine process, and modern software aims to help retailers manage its complexity across capture, promising, orchestration, fulfillment, and returns. Retailers continue to rebuild operations and technology to handle the scale and complexity of omni-channel demand. The most persistent gap remains real-time, network-wide inventory visibility, while composable architecture has become a baseline expectation, and AI, including agentic AI, is moving from road map toward early production with uneven maturity.

"The costs of shipping, last-mile delivery, and returns have made channel-by-channel decisions too slow and too expensive to sustain. In response, retailers are aligning operations around order management as a real-time coordination layer, where each order is sourced and fulfilled against a single picture of demand and inventory", says Ornella Urso, research director, IDC Retail Insights. "Order orchestration and fulfillment have become a key lever that increasingly moves margin and service outcomes, between customer engagement and operations to serve customers consistently and profitably. One more, AI (and agents) is central to this shit."

IDC Survey Spotlight: What Are the Hidden Costs of Disconnected Guest Experience and Data in Restaurants?

Dorothy Creamer — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight examines the hidden costs of disconnected guest experience and data in eating and drinking establishments. Drawing on IDC’s 2026 Retail Technologies and Business Processes Trends Survey, it finds fulfillment friction, data privacy, and weak loyalty topping operators’ urgent commerce challenges. IDC argues that unified commerce platforms, governed guest data, and closed-loop loyalty are essential to converting personalization ambition into sustainable retention.

IDC Survey: Customer Journey and Channel Preferences Across Regulated and Competitive Markets — Insights from IDC’s 2026 Energy Consumer Affordability & Trust Survey

Gaia Gallotti — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey examines a portion of IDC’s 2026 Energy Consumer Affordability & Trust Survey. This landmark study, conducted in May 2026, is a B2C survey that covers energy customers worldwide.

The survey included 1,507 energy customers from the following 18 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Italy, France, Germany, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States.

This presentation analyzes the energy customer journey experiences and channel preferences for two segments:

Competitive markets (n = 691): Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom
Regulated markets (n = 816): Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States

The analysis covers:

Frequency of digital tool usage for energy monitoring
Frequency and reasons for contacting the energy provider
Issue resolution outcomes
Channel preferences across seven task types
Customer behavior when digital channels fail

Market Forecast: Worldwide Creative Applications Forecast, 2026–2030

Roger Beharry Lall — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation provides revenue projections by deployment model and geography through 2030. The worldwide creative applications market is projected to reach $39.1 billion by 2030, expanding from $22.0 billion in 2025, at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 12.2%. Generative AI, content supply chain modernization, and the growing requirement for machine-readable content are among the structural forces driving that trajectory.

“Nearly $40.0 billion by 2030 reflects something more fundamental than a software adoption curve. Creative work is being rebuilt around AI, and organizations investing in governed, connected content infrastructure today are laying the foundation for a real competitive advantage in the future.” — Roger Beharry Lall, research director, Advertising Technologies and SMB Marketing Applications

Market Share: Worldwide Project and Portfolio Management Shares, 2025 — Strategic Planning, Collaboration, and Agentic Impact Drive Growth

Melinda-Carol Ballou — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation provides 2025 market shares for the worldwide project and portfolio management (PPM) software market. The market grew 12.2% to $8.6 billion in 2025, driven by evolving AI and ML, initial agentic use, and ongoing cloud adoption. Strategic portfolio management, collaborative work, and resource concerns drove growth, driven in part by volatile economic and geopolitical environments and disruptive supply chains. Revenue increased for major and innovative smaller PPM, SPM, and CWM vendors, as sourcing and alignment with business needs and regulations became more complex.

“Ongoing supply chain and resource disruption in 2025, along with emerging AI and agentic benefits, drove PPM growth in 2025, as businesses began to leverage AI-driven models to scale and contextualize intelligence for collaboration, prioritization, and execution. We expect ongoing demand across segments, along with governance and agentic orchestration imperatives, as consolidation and innovation drive CWM, SPM, and adaptive planning.” — Melinda Ballou, research director, IDC’s AI Assurance, ALM, Quality, and Portfolio Strategies service.

Worldwide Hyperscaler and Top Service Provider Infrastructure Demand, 1Q26

Leon Kao — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation provides an overview of service provider infrastructure demand trends among 15 select service providers through 1Q26.

市场份额：中国智能流程自动化（APA）产品及解决方案市场份额，2025：智能体加快流程自动化落地，数字员工成为应用新形态

Zhenya Sun — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:00:00 GMT

本IDC研究分析了2025年中国智能流程自动化（APA）产品及解决方案市场中领先供应商的市场份额。

2025年，中国APA产品及解决方案市场规模约21.5亿元人民币。市场收入主要来自两类需求：一类是采用传统流程自动化的企业通过智能体能力降低流程构建、变更维护和异常处理成本的升级需求；另一类是企业围绕跨系统、跨流程和跨岗位任务，建设可治理的数字员工和端到端自动化能力的需求。

IDC中国智能体与AI应用领域研究经理孙振亚表示：”APA市场的形成是企业自动化体系在智能体时代的一次重新分层。过去企业RPA、工作流和规则引擎等继续承担稳定执行任务，智能体负责理解任务、组织能力和处理动态输入；二者之间需要一层可治理的平台，一方面把API、脚本、流程等封装为智能体可用的工具和Skills能力，另一方面帮助企业更便捷地构建和维护这些关键的智能化资产，这便是APA的核心定位。对企业而言，APA不仅仅会带来流程提效，更重要的是能够帮助企业建立更敏捷的端到端任务自动化能力。”