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AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI Implementations to Optimize Supply Chain Finance

Maria Adele Di Comite — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective examines how AI, generative AI, and agentic AI are being deployed to optimize supply chain finance (SCF) — the financing of receivables, payables, and inventory across buyer-supplier ecosystems. The document maps four layers of AI capability now live in SCF platforms, the use cases and measurable outcomes attached to each, the governance and data challenges slowing broader autonomy, and the road map items vendors are converging on next. While there are open questions regulators and the industry are working through, AI adoption is not a risk to be avoided to be on the safe side but a huge opportunity to optimize supply chain finance, to be handled with care.

"Supply chain finance is no longer a paperwork problem with automation bolted on — it's becoming a live, self-monitoring layer of the trade ecosystem. The institutions furthest along didn't get there by adding a chatbot to old workflows; they redesigned the decision architecture, and the governance around it, at the same time," said Maria Adele Di Comite, senior research director, IDC Financial Insights.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud Professional Services in the AI Era 2026 Vendor Assessment

Jennifer Thomson, Eren Eser — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study represents a vendor assessment of the 2026 cloud professional services market through the IDC MarketScape model. This research is a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the characteristics that explain a vendor's success in the marketplace and help anticipate that vendor's ascendancy. This IDC MarketScape covers a variety of vendors participating in the worldwide cloud professional services market and reflects the dramatic reshaping of buyer expectations driven by generative and agentic AI. A record 27 vendors were evaluated, including six new entrants — Caylent, Infosys, Innova Solutions, Insight, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro — reflecting both the maturation of inclusion thresholds and the broader expansion of cloud professional services capability across the global services landscape.

"Cloud has shifted from being the destination of a transformation to being the foundation of a transformation. In 2026, the question for buyers is no longer 'how do I move to the cloud' but 'how does my cloud estate let me deploy and govern AI agents that materially change how my business runs' and the providers that can answer that question convincingly are the ones that will lead the next decade of this market," said Jennifer Thomson, vice president, Research at IDC.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Digital Workplace Services 2026 Vendor Assessment

Pushkaraksh Shanbhag — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study represents a vendor assessment of providers offering digital workplace services (DWS) through the IDC MarketScape model. The assessment reviews both quantitative and qualitative characteristics that define current market demand and expected buyer needs across the DWS market. The evaluation is based on a comprehensive and rigorous framework that assesses vendors relative to defined criteria. The framework highlights the key factors expected to matter most for success in the DWS market, both in the short and long term.

"Digital workplace vendors have moved agentic AI from pilot to production faster than they have moved AI governance from concept to codified practice. Buyers should treat a provider's ability to govern AI in live operation as seriously as its ability to deploy it," says Pushkaraksh Shanbhag, senior research director, Worldwide Services, IDC.

IDC PlanScape: Defining the Opportunity for Hospitality and Travel Media Networks

Dorothy Creamer — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC PlanScape defines what a media network is for a hospitality or travel operator, explains why the category has become important, identifies the stakeholders who must fund and govern it, and lays out a phased path to grow the bottom line by selling advertising, both to outside brands and to the operator's own on-property and brand-owned ancillaries, products, and services. None of this works without the first-party data that an operator already holds. This data is the targeting engine behind every ad sold through the network, whether the buyer is an outside brand or the operator's own spa or restaurant, and it is what turns advertising from an interruption into a personalized offer a guest is more likely to welcome.

"Every hospitality and travel operation is already sitting on vast amounts of valuable guest and traveler data," says Dorothy Creamer, senior research manager, Hospitality and Travel Digital Strategies, IDC. "This very data is often untouched or ineffectually used to drive revenue for properties and operators. A media network offers the potential to leverage this data twice: once to sell an outside brand's ad and once to sell the operator's own spa appointment or dinner reservation. Most travel and hospitality organizations have not decided who inside the organization owns the opportunity. Brands must build for these opportunities while recognizing the importance of organizational ownership along with the technology decisions that need to be made."

The Race to Orchestrate the AI Hospital

Mutaz Shegewi — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Health systems and technology vendors are racing to claim the "control plane" of the AI-driven hospital, but IDC's Phase 1 landscape review of 38 suppliers and 15 real-world deployments found that no architecture has permanently secured that role, although pure operational orchestration is currently furthest ahead on independently corroborated evidence. Room-centric sensor platforms are scaling but remain disconnected from hospital-wide decision-making. EHR vendors have the deepest clinical workflow footprint, but workflow depth is not the same as control-plane status. Pure operational orchestration solutions are delivering independently corroborated, large-scale ROI today without needing the room to be smart first. Physical robotics is bifurcating: Reliability failures have sidelined delivery and mobile-transport robots at multiple health systems, even as platform-level investment and surgical robotics leaders accelerate a separate part of the category, while AI governance is emerging as its own hospital-wide layer that may end up setting the pace for how fast the rest of the architecture is allowed to scale. This document gives technology buyers a sequenced, evidence-led framework for funding what is proven now, scoping what remains a vendor thesis, and monitoring the signals that will determine which architecture ultimately anchors the AI hospital.

"Every vendor in this landscape has a story about why they want to orchestrate the AI hospital. The data says otherwise. While the smart room is scaling and the EHR is deepening, operational orchestration is delivering and governance is quietly outpacing them all. Buyers who fund based on marketing timelines instead of evidence may end up with the wrong AI hospital architecture," says Mutaz Shegewi, senior research director, IDC Health Insights.

Agentic Orchestration Tries It On: The Opportunity for Media Networks Confronts a Reckoning in Fashion and Luxury Retail

Ornella Urso, Alex Holtz — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

“Real retail media programs exist at Saks Global, Nordstrom, Ulta Beauty, Selfridges, Mytheresa, and FARFETCH, but none has the DSP-branded, self-serve vertical infrastructure that travel and grocery retail media have already built — a gap that is simultaneously the category’s biggest limitation and clearest opportunity,” said Ornella Urso, research director, IDC Retail Insights.

“Retail and commerce media networks are set to outpace social as the fastest-growing share of worldwide advertising spend through 2030, and fashion, luxury, and prestige beauty retail is the largest unclaimed pool in that shift,” said Alex Holtz, research director, IDC Worldwide Media and Entertainment Digital Strategies. “The operators that stand up agentic orchestration now — clean first-party data, self-serve buying, measurement a brand advertiser will accept — will monetize demand they already generate. Those that wait will keep renting audiences they already own.”

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Construction Management Software 2026 Vendor Assessment

Jeffrey Hojlo — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC MarketScape report analyzes vendors in the construction management software segment.

“The AEC industry is accelerating toward digital, virtually overnight in some cases from paper and analog. They realize that the age-old challenges in the construction industry of cost and time overruns, quality and safety issues, as well as true integrated project delivery (IPD) and collaboration can be alleviated through much of the construction management software available today,” said Jeffrey Hojlo, research vice president, IDC’s Industrial Ecosystems, Engineering, & Product Innovation Strategies.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Retail Merchandise Financial Planning Solutions 2026 Vendor Assessment

Ananda Chakravarty — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study assesses vendors in the worldwide retail merchandise financial planning market. Merchandise financial planning is a decades-old discipline that moved from manual spreadsheets to codified top-down/bottom-up reconciliation built around preseason, in-season, and postseason cycles, with OTB and WSSI tracking. That model has hit its limits, and MFP has begun a dramatic shift toward AI and forward-looking agentic models that run continuously and holistically. For buyers, the harder work is outside the software selection. Retailers need to evaluate their internal planning considerations to determine how to leverage upcoming capabilities in data, AI, and workflows that exceed those of standard spreadsheets. This usually means change management and new ways of working. However, the end results will provide the necessary edge to maintain a modern retail operation and plan accordingly.

“Retailers able to make the transition to leveraging compute technology — whether it is heuristic or more advanced AI — will come away with advantages over those resorting to manual engagement and merchant-only perspectives,” says Ananda Chakravarty, VP Research, IDC Retail, Hospitality, and Media Insights.

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