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Market Forecast: Worldwide Payroll Applications Forecast, 2026–2030

Zachary Chertok — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation provides the five-year forecast for the payroll applications market and delivers insights into the drivers and inhibitors of growth.

"Payroll management is transitioning to real-time management and compliance automation models as it shifts from a back-end task to a data-driven and AI-enabled outcome. On-demand payroll is allowing employees to access their earned income on demand, decoupling payouts from traditional, employer-led pay cycles. At the same time, automated and AI-verified compliance and rules checks are giving way to instant error remediation, reducing financial risks for employers and employees." — Zachary Chertok, senior research manager, Employee Experience

IDC Innovators: Context Infrastructure for Agentic AI, 2026

Amy Machado — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Innovators presentation introduces context infrastructure for agentic AI, an important trend built on a single premise: An agent's reliability depends on the context it reasons over, not just the model behind it. Vendor approaches in this space converge on a common context architecture: structuring content so its meaning survives machine processing, grounding answers in verifiable evidence rather than model inference alone, governing what an agent is permitted to see and do, and preserving traceability back to the original source.

IDC profiles four IDC Innovators — Vertesia, Adya, DaaX.ai, and Brandi — each building toward this architecture from a different starting point.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Enabled Direct Spend 2026 Vendor Assessment

Patrick Reymann, Simon Ellis — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study provides insights into the worldwide AI-enabled direct spend market. Direct spend software is becoming a strategic control plane for manufacturers, connecting design, BOMs, sourcing, supplier collaboration, cost, quality, risk, and execution. In 2026, leaders differentiate through manufacturing-specific process depth, ERP/PLM integration, closed-loop collaboration, and governed AI — not generic RFx capability. Buyers should prioritize fit for their manufacturing model and clean master-data flows, measurable AI outcomes, and embedded sustainability and compliance. The market is shifting toward supervised agentic workflows, should-cost intelligence, multitier visibility, and convergence with product life-cycle and supply chain systems.

"Direct spend is no longer indirect procurement with longer lead times — it is the digital control plane linking product design, sourcing, supplier execution, and risk. The winners will pair manufacturing depth with governed AI and integration that works in production." — Patrick Reymann, research director, Procurement Applications and Agents

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Agentic AI–Enabled Customer Service 2026 Vendor Assessment

Oru Mohiuddin, Michelle Morgan — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study discusses how agentic AI is reshaping customer service by converging previously fragmented contact center and ticketing systems into a single model, using intent recognition and orchestration rather than manual routing. Master agents will coordinate specialized AI agents via standards like MCP and A2A, drawing on a unified data layer and knowledge base for consistent context. This demands converged IT infrastructure, robust governance, and human oversight for critical actions. As AI handles more autonomously, human agents will focus on complex, high-touch work, reshaping workforce management and the competitive landscape around architecture rather than features alone.

“Agentic AI is breaking down the structural barriers that have long separated contact centers, ticketing, and case management, opening the market to a far more diverse range of players than we’ve seen before. The vendors that win this market will be the ones that get to agentic maturity first, at scale, without compromising on accuracy or security,” said Oru Mohiuddin, research director, IDC.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Agentic Marketing for Small Businesses 2026 Vendor Assessment

Roger Beharry Lall — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study evaluates agentic marketing platforms available to small businesses and provides essential guidance for technology buyers in this segment. Small businesses have historically been caught between consumer-grade marketing tools that are too limited and enterprise platforms that are too complex to adopt without dedicated technical staff. Agentic marketing platforms are beginning to close that gap, offering AI agents that plan, execute, and adjust campaigns with limited manual intervention. This study defines the market, evaluates vendors serving small business buyers, and assesses how close current offerings come to genuine agentic capability, the ability to learn and adapt without manual reconfiguration, versus sophisticated automation carrying an agent label. IDC finds real, practical value available today, alongside real gaps small business buyers should weigh carefully, particularly around ongoing technical requirements and governance that works without a dedicated administrator.

"The small businesses winning with agentic marketing aren't the ones chasing the most sophisticated platform. They're choosing vendors that work out of the box, solve one clear use case, and prove value within weeks. This market is moving fast, and the vendors pulling ahead are building specifically for what small businesses need, not retrofitting enterprise tools for a smaller buyer." — Roger Beharry Lall, research director, Advertising Technologies and SMB Marketing Applications

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Intelligent Content Services 2026 Vendor Assessment

Amy Machado — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study examines how content services vendors are adapting as content shifts from a passive system of record to the context layer that AI — and, increasingly, AI agents — depend on to reason, retrieve, and act. IDC evaluates vendors on their ability to make enterprise content AI ready at scale. This includes enrichment and semantic retrieval, native agent access through emerging standards like MCP, governance built directly into the platform to manage AI's expanded risk surface, and content modernization built into the migration process itself.

"Content earns the label 'intelligent' when it stops being merely stored and retrieved and becomes the context layer that AI and automation depend on to reason, retrieve, and act reliably," says Amy Machado, research director, Content and Knowledge Discovery Strategies, IDC.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Intelligent Customer Communication Management 2026 Vendor Assessment

Amy Machado — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC MarketScape study represents a vendor assessment of the worldwide intelligent customer communications management (CCM) software market through the IDC MarketScape model. This year's assessment lands at an inflection point for the market: vendors are racing to embed AI into every layer of the platform, rather than treating it as a bolt-on content-generation feature. That shift is also reshaping the competitive landscape itself, as AI-assisted migration tooling meaningfully lowers the switching costs that have long protected incumbent vendors. This study evaluates CCM vendors on the strength and maturity of their AI and automation strategy, the rigor of their governance and compliance posture as AI takes on more autonomous work, and their ability to reduce the operational and administrative burden that has historically driven CCM's total cost of ownership.

"AI is now touching nearly every part of the CCM platform, including authoring, personalization, admin, migration, and orchestration," said Amy Machado, research director, IDC. "That's exactly why governance cannot be an afterthought. Buyers need to know who approved what, where their data went, and whether the AI enforcing their compliance rules are transparent and auditable."

IDC Survey: Build, Buy, or Partner — Sourcing Choices in the Energy Transition

Roberta Bigliani — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey draws from the results of IDC’s 2026 Energy Transition Survey, which examines how large organizations across manufacturing, buildings, transportation, construction, retail, and datacenter operations are shaping their energy transition programs. It quantifies target maturity, investment direction, drivers, expected reductions, benefits achieved, and payback expectations. The findings inform the go-to-market strategy for technology suppliers and services providers working in decarbonization, energy efficiency, and asset performance.

This presentation profiles the partner ecosystem, the service and commercial models organizations buy, the ways renewable electricity is sourced, and the capability and satisfaction signals that shape partner selection through 2027. It also separates three commercial instruments that buyers and suppliers often treat as one: energy performance contracts, outcome-based or as-a-service models, and the wider category respondents describe as performance-based contracting.

The analysis covers:

Internal versus external responsibility for energy transition delivery
Partner categories, portfolio breadth, and how the mix differs by region
Commercial models, with definitions separating guaranteed savings from as-a-service delivery
Renewable sourcing routes and how they differ by region, from supplier tariffs and certificates to power purchase agreements (PPAs) and onsite generation
Adoption of performance-based contracting by region and company size, reconciled against the instrument’s buyer’s name
Capabilities organizations buy from partners rather than build internally, split by partner category
Satisfaction with lead partners across four rated attributes and what it implies for displacement

IDC Survey: IDC’s Worldwide Supply Chain Survey — Life Sciences

Simon Ellis, Nino Giguashvili — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey provides insight into the supply chain challenges and opportunities life sciences companies are facing, their current priorities, the drivers of change in the strategic focus of their supply chains, the impact of ongoing disruptions (protectionism/tariffs, economic uncertainty), and the use of modern digital technologies, particularly AI. The data for this presentation comes from IDC’s 2026 Supply Chain Survey and reflects the life sciences respondent base across all regions polled. Fielded in May 2026, the overall sample size for this survey was 1,374, with 149 specific to life sciences.

IDC's Worldwide Semiannual AI, Data and Automation Cloud Services Tracker

Rasmus Andsbjerg, Karen Massey — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study outlines market segmentation and measurement methodologies for the AI, data, and automation cloud services tracker, including software markets, company, geography, deployment type, and revenue metrics reported. It serves as the foundation for understanding the reported segments of the tracker and describes how these segments relate to IDC research in general.

"IDC's Worldwide Semiannual AI, Data, and Automation Cloud Services Tracker represents a comprehensive outline of segments reported in the data product," says Karen Massey, director, Data and Analytics, IDC. "The tracker is a critical research tool to measure performance of market participants, review market opportunities, guide investment decisions, identify partners, analyze acquisitions, and much more," she also adds.