In The News

Gartner insight and advice is referenced in the media almost every hour every day. Here's just a selection.

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In a 2023 consumer survey conducted by Gartner, 89% of respondents said they’d struggle to identify AI content. The flood of generative AI content — combined with consumers not with knowing what’s real or not — makes transparency even more important, said Gartner analyst Nicole Greene. She also noted three fourths of respondents said it’s “very important” or of “upmost importance” for brands that use generative AI content to properly label it. That’s up from two thirds of respondents in a previous survey.

“We’re facing a challenging environment for trust as we head into an upcoming election cycle and Olympics year where influencers, celebrities and brands will likely be facing the threat of deepfakes at an unprecedented scale,” she said. “Figuring out what’s authentic is going to be even more important as it’s harder for people to know due to the sophistication of the tech to make things look so real.”

Learn more here.

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Marketers are facing decline organic traffic that could be buoyed by GenAI content, according to Gartner analyst Nicole Greene. She said Gartner estimated organic site traffic declined 9.% between the fourth quarter of 2022 and the third quarter of 2023. 

“To address this, they’ll need to focus more on where customers are, increasingly in genAI enabled search platforms,” Greene said. “CMOs also need to rethink how they measure success, and a straightforward approach is to focus on the creating copy aligned to customer insights and keywords. Using these embedded capabilities has the potential to help marketers recovering traffic and brand visibility lost due to changes in search engine design.”

Learn more here.

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Brands and advertisers are worried about the abuse of AI and how it could affect their operations, according to Nicole Denman Greene, VP analyst at research firm Gartner. A recent Gartner study found that 55% of brand reputation leaders said generative AI poses a risk to their brands, Greene said. Part of that risk is the proliferation of misinformation created with the help of AI and deepfake scams that co-opt their brands.

“There’s a lot of work for brands and their agencies to do right now,” Greene said. “They’re going to have to manage both the consumer and business risks as generative AI content and adoption increases.”

Learn more here.

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Leah Leachman, senior director analyst in Gartner’s marketing practice, noted that many consumers are comfortable sharing information about product history, basic demographics and online media consumption history but are leery about companies using their browsing histories or household data.

Businesses need to continuously and proactively understand customers’ expectations around privacy and be empathetic to their preferences, Leachman said in an email to CX Dive “Even though data collection is commonplace, customers have limited comfort with sharing certain types of personal data.”

Learn more here.

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Generative AI poses a double-edged sword for marketers, as underscored in the latest outlook from Gartner. On the one hand, the ability to automate more processes faster could open the door to fresh creative possibilities and less time spent on marketing busywork. That promise will lead CMOs to seriously increase their spending on AI talent, a trend that could potentially benefit agencies that are quickly building out infrastructure to support the technology. 

At the same time, the growing prevalence of AI and its association with disinformation will create problems for CMOs and their marketing service providers. By 2027, one-fifth of brands will leverage an absence of AI in their business as a point of differentiation, according to Gartner, looking to meet demands for authenticity.

Learn more here.

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ChatGPT has also been a gateway drug for more AI investments. Earlier this year, a Gartner survey of 2,500 executives found 45% of respondents cited ChatGPT’s popularity as reason to increase their AI investments. One of the major ways ChatGPT has had an impact is in making generative AI more accessible, according to Gartner analyst Nicole Greene. She pointed out that market penetration for generative AI was less than 1% two years ago and was between 5% and 20% this summer.

“You don’t think about the true impact that tech has on you until you go back and say, ‘What did I do without this before?’” Greene said. “Can you imagine a time when you didn’t search the internet on your phone? Generative AI is following the hype cycle we’ve seen around emerging technology….It’s following the hype cycle, but it’s so much faster.”

Learn more here.

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In recent years, the success of digital commerce in generating revenue has prompted greater expectations for returns and investments. According to Gartner research, 90% of CMOs say that increasing investments in additional capabilities to support digital commerce is a priority for the next 18 months. These investments are vital for supporting revenue growth and digital commerce success. Let's take a look at digital commerce strategy.

Many organizations prioritize technology investments but fail to address broader capability gaps in terms of processes and people. To identify and prioritize where investment is needed most, digital marketing leaders should work to develop a roadmap that addresses holistic capability gaps (people, processes and technology) in order to support future ecommerce growth.

Learn more here.

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A candidate’s signature on a job offer letter is no guarantee they’ll walk through the door on day one. In fact, after accepting an offer, 51% of new hires either later decline the offer or completely ghost the employer, according to a recent Gartner study of 3,500 candidates who were on the job hunt in the past 12 months.

That figure has been rising for the past several years, says Jamie Kohn, a senior director of research in Gartner’s HR practice. For example, in 2019, 36% of survey participants acknowledged they backed out of an offer after accepting it, a figure that rose to 44% in 2022.

And even if new hires arrive on their start date, hiring managers say 19% quit within the first six months, according to a 2022 Gartner survey of 3,000 hiring managers. This figure is on par with pre-pandemic levels of 18% in 2019, according to Kohn.

Read the full article here.

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Environmental sustainability objectives have rapidly become a top CEO priority.

Achieving these objectives requires a shared responsibility approach: responsible use by organizations, coupled with responsible provision by vendors. Linking these two fundamental contributors is the sourcing function.

Although the enterprise can act internally on sustainability, many are limited by their vendors’ priorities and capabilities to support decarbonization goals. By selecting sustainable vendors, products and services that align with the enterprise’s sustainability requirements, sourcing can have a material impact on environmental outcomes.

Information technology sourcing leaders cannot afford to be bystanders to environmental sustainability. Through the foreseeable future, IT will drive an increase in energy consumption, including extensive impact through generative AI. As IT sourcing enters an environmental revolution, sustainability must be embedded within the fabric of every IT sourcing decision. By setting clear yet demanding requirements, sourcing leaders can direct the IT industry along a sustainable trajectory by fully embedding and operationalizing sustainability in the decision-making process.

Read the full article here.

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Today, organizations and their IT leaders are surrounded by digital technologies that can support innovation, including cloud, generative AI and edge. IT leaders want to transform their business through technology advancement while ensuring that costs are contained.

However, many organizations struggle to find the synergistic relationship between these technologies to serve complex use cases. Businesses that have moved beyond using the cloud as an infrastructure play to instead rely on cloud as a platform for their digital transformation needs are looking to leverage cloud features and functionalities to drive business outcomes.

The individual standalone services offered by many cloud providers do not help organizations address their needs. The siloed approach taken by cloud providers misses the bigger opportunity and benefit when services are combined to deliver outcomes aligned with the customer’s digital ambitions. Emerging technologies and their components can be combined in different ways to uncover new and better value.

Cloud IT services providers have an opportunity to simplify the issue for customers and level up their value proposition through bundling.

By shifting the focus from individual discrete services to interlocking components that can be combined, providers can help customers address specific use cases and drive better business outcomes.

Read more here.

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Why CFOs must remove barriers to growth in a ‘deadweight’ economy

What sets apart leading efficient-growth companies is the way they remove “growth anchors” that impede action, Gartner’s Dennis Gannon writes. Read the full article at CFO Dive.

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But opting for remote work in companies that have a largely in-person operations can sometimes raise concerns about proximity bias, where leaders treat employees who are physically present around them more favorably. This can trickle down to the promotions and pay raises people receive if they opt for a more flexible arrangement, even if they are more productive. 

“Leaders tend to think that in-office workers are better performers, they tend to see them as more likely to be promoted. So, there’s a risk that if women are taking advantage of remote work more often because they’re expected to be responsible for so many different things outside of work, they may end up suffering in terms of their career progression,” Caitlin Duffy, research director at Gartner HR, told Fortune.

Read the full article here.

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The future of the project manager role has been hotly debated as a number of trends shift organizational dynamics:

Gartner research has found that businesses are increasingly adopting agile development and product management models, with 44% of work now delivered through agile methods and 39% through product models.

Traditional project management activities, such as validating requirements, maintaining scope and measuring benefits, have become the domain of autonomous delivery teams (i.e., multidisciplinary teams accountable for business outcomes) such as scrum and fusion teams.

Moreover, recent technological advancements — most notably, in generative AI — mean many project manager tasks, such as resource utilization tracking and business case creation, can be successfully automated.

Learn more here.

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Job descriptions for CISOs consistently include lists of requirements that repeat a series of open-ended, nonquantifiable targets, such as reducing enterprise risk or malware attacks. Demands that are impossible to attain or to track can lead to a sense of low professional efficacy.

Consequently, this has led to CISOs experiencing one of the worst burnout rates.

Trust is an indispensable asset to organizations and employees and is considered one of the best indicators of business success, yet it rarely appears in a CISO’s job description. Instead of focusing on a list of nebulous targets, CISOs should focus on delivering trust to three key constituencies: their leadership, their peers and their inner circle. 

It can be challenging for senior leadership to build and develop trust, so it is important to focus on defining what trust means to the CISO.

Read more here.

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Intelligent applications are software applications with behaviors and outcomes achieved through learning, using one or more artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. These applications are applicable in any domain, including core business applications such as customer relationship management (CRM), HR and supply chain management. The addition of AI-based techniques in intelligent applications enables new features through probabilistic and generative techniques that AI allows for.

Product leaders must focus on implementing intelligent capabilities to compete against the coming wave of emerging offerings. They can learn, adapt, generate new ideas and outcomes and increase automated and dynamic decision making. The impact of intelligent applications will disrupt established software markets and business models.

Read the full article here.

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Whether they know it or not, retail CMOs are in a sprint race.

GenAI will transform the way retail marketing teams operate by providing CMOs with powerful tools to enhance customer experiences, streamline operations, and drive profitability. The magnitude of the opportunities mean those who find successes with GenAI earliest will win considerable market share from the slow movers.

According to Gartner research, 44% of retail leaders are already utilizing GenAI and another 37% plan to invest in it in the next 6 months. 

Read more here.

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Only 31% of employees say they are engaged, enthusiastic and energized by their work, according to an Oct. 24 report by Gartner, Inc.

Workers who report being energized and excited about their work are 31% more likely to stay at their organization, according to the report. In addition, these workers are 31% more likely to go above and beyond, and they contribute 15% more.

“Despite organizations making investments in engaging their employees, our research shows that almost 70% don’t feel as engaged as they should be and aren’t feeling a meaningful connection to their job,” Keyia Burton, senior principal and advisory in the Gartner HR practice, said in a statement.

Read the full story in HR Dive here.