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Acumatica Summit 2026: Bringing to Life AI-powered ERP, Transformation, and Human Innovation for Real-world SMB Results

Mickey North Rizza — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Acumatica held its annual Acumatica Summit in Seattle, Washington January 25-28^th, 2026. The summit hosted more than 3,000 Acumatica community members, including customers, partners, analysts and media. The event focused on Small and Medium businesses (SMBs) in the manufacturing, retail, distribution, professional services, and construction industries.

The SMB AI Adoption Journey, Part 2: Top Current and Future Use Cases

Elisabeth Clemmons, Katie Evans — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey presentation looks at SMBs' top current and future use cases for AI and automation. It also provides an overview in terms of employee size, region, digital transformation journey, and vertical. This presentation draws from IDC's February 2025 Worldwide Small and Medium-Sized Business Survey.

The SMB Merger and Acquisition Landscape: Motivations, Priorities, and Challenges for SMBs and Digital-Native Start-Ups

Elisabeth Clemmons, Nupur Singh Andley, Katie Evans — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation examines the merger and acquisition landscape, specifically as it pertains to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and digital-native businesses (DNBs). It looks at how SMBs use M&A as a strategy, breaking it down by employee size, region, and vertical. It also examines trends and best practices, drawing upon two case study interviews conducted by IDC researchers as well as data from PitchBook and IDC's 2025 Worldwide Small and Medium Business Survey.

Salesforce's Free Suite for SMBs: Market Positioning and Practical Implications

Roger Beharry Lall — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Note provides an overview of Salesforce's Free Suite, launched in November 2025, that marks a strategic pivot toward small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) by offering a no-cost CRM tier with two user licenses and essential sales, service, and marketing features. While the Free Suite lowers entry barriers and introduces SMBs to Salesforce's robust enterprise-grade infrastructure, it carries significant limitations — minimal customization, restricted automation, and capped marketing capabilities — that constrain its utility for growing teams. Implementation remains more complex and costly compared with SMB-focused competitors, with data migration and setup presenting notable friction points.

Despite these constraints, the Free Suite provides a credible entry path for small teams needing structured CRM without up-front investment, leveraging Salesforce's unified data model and scalability. However, its limited functionality means organizations will quickly outgrow the free tier (supporting Salesforce's conversion-oriented needs). Competing free CRM offerings, such as HubSpot and Zoho, deliver broader features and easier onboarding, challenging Salesforce's value proposition for teams prioritizing speed and simplicity. Ultimately, the Free Suite serves as an onboarding tool, and its success will depend on Salesforce's ability to demonstrate upgrade value and ease the transition to paid tiers.

Agent-Based Marketing Operations in the Midmarket: Current State and Near-Term Outlook

Roger Beharry Lall — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC presentation examines the current state and near-term outlook for agent-based (agentic) marketing operations among United States–based midmarket organizations that are already using or planning to use AI agents in the next 12 months. Drawing from an online survey of 150 senior marketing and advertising leaders (i.e., director level and above) from U.S. midmarket and enterprise companies, the research quantifies adoption levels, planned deployments, and key use cases for AI agents across core marketing functions and industries.

This presentation focuses on how midmarket organizations are incorporating autonomous agents into campaign execution, personalization, workload automation, and customer data management, and how these patterns vary by company size and go-to-market focus. It evaluates preferred deployment models (i.e., embedded, third party, and custom built) alongside emerging expectations for pricing and management structures as agents move from pilot to production.

Beyond adoption metrics, the survey probes organizational readiness and risk posture, covering governance maturity, data and content quality, and the practical challenges of integrating agents into existing people, process, and technology stacks. For vendors, services firms, and marketing leaders, the findings provide a benchmark for SMB progress in agentic marketing and pinpoint the skills, governance, data, and integration gaps that must be closed to unlock the next wave of AI agent–driven performance.

The SMB AI Adoption Journey, Part 1: Top Priorities in AI Investment

Elisabeth Clemmons, Katie Evans — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey presentation looks at SMBs' top priorities in terms of investment in forward-looking technologies, namely AI and automation. It also provides an overview in terms of employee size, region, digital transformation journey, and vertical. This presentation draws from IDC's February 2025 Worldwide Small and Medium Business Survey.

SMB Budgeting for AI/Automation, 2026

Elisabeth Clemmons, Katie Evans — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation examines small and medium-sized businesses' (SMBs') technology budgets and investment priorities, with a specific focus on AI and automation technologies, including GenAI and agentic AI. It highlights key priorities for SMBs in planning their AI/automation investments and provides an overview of preferred pricing strategies and models.

To What Extent Are SMBs Using Low-Code/No-Code Technologies?

Elisabeth Clemmons, Katie Evans — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight examines how SMBs are approaching low-code/no-code practices in their organizations. It draws from IDC's Worldwide Small and Medium-Sized Business Survey, fielded in February 2025.

AI in Adtech: Industry Context, Brand Realities, and Evolving Use Case Considerations, 2026

Roger Beharry Lall — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Presentation, initially shared in December 2025, begins by exploring the current advertising technology (adtech) context — the rise of unified omni-channel strategies, the shift from SEO to artificial intelligence (AI)-driven discovery, and the growing importance of first-party data, identity resolution, and data governance as prerequisites for effective artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the advertising technology landscape, redefining how brands discover audiences, orchestrate campaigns, and extract value from data across channels.

Against this backdrop, the presentation then examines some burgeoning AI use cases across the adtech landscape, including media buying, optimization, creative, and performance, contrasting midmarket and enterprise adoption patterns, risk considerations, and organizational decision dynamics.

The deck provides a practical, data-backed framework for vendors and brands planning AI-enabled adtech road maps and go-to-market strategies.

How Company Size Informs CIO Strategies: Differences Across Lower Midmarket, Upper Midmarket, and Large Enterprise from IDC's 2025 CIO Sentiment Survey

Mona Liddell — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Presentation examines how CIO priorities and challenges compare across company size using data from IDC's 2025 CIO Sentiment Survey (n = 437). While many priorities are shared across lower midmarket (500–999 employees; n = 105), upper midmarket (1,000–4,999; n = 163), and large enterprise (5,000+; n = 169) organizations, the data reveals meaningful differences in execution capacity, operating constraints, risk exposure, and the impact of scale. The findings define practical archetypes by company size and highlight where CIOs face similar expectations but need different approaches across digital transformation, investment priorities, talent and skills, security and AI risk, and technical debt.