A survey of 300 business leaders conducted by Forbes Insights and Acxiom reveals that a vast majority use data for at least 40% of key business decisions in their organizations. However, “the amount of data does not correlate with data-driven insights,” says Jarrod Martin, chief executive officer of Acxiom. “What matters is the ability to translate relevant data into desired business outcomes.” Most companies are faced with this dilemma, according to the survey. They experience breakdowns in their data-driven decision-making, and their ability to act on data in real time is limited. This brief explores how companies can approach data strategy and execution to evolve from data-rich to decision-ready.

Long viewed as a back-office function focused on cost control and compliance, business travel and expense is emerging as a source of strategic insight, employee delight and value. To learn more about this change, American Express commissioned Forbes Insights in February 2026 to survey 500 executives at large U.S. organizations across industries about how they are rethinking their T&E operations. Data from the online survey shows a clear inflection point with a majority of surveyed executives (69%) — from managers to the C-suite — agreeing that, in their organization, T&E is viewed as a strategic capability that can make a meaningful contribution to the business. This report explores the T&E evolution and provides a road map for business leaders seeking to transform T&E management from an administrative burden to a source of value.

To learn more about the challenges and priorities of modernizing travel and expense management, American Express and Forbes Insights conducted an online survey of 520 senior executives from large U.S. organizations, including leaders in the C-suite. While many have implemented cost-saving technologies, operational improvements are being rolled out more slowly. According to the survey, 81% of executives frequently use data analytics to optimize costs, but only 38% have automated travel approvals or expense filing. Clearly, there is a lot more potential to streamline workflows and minimize the time-sucking chore of expense reporting and approvals. This report explores important innovations shaping travel and expense strategies and how business leaders plan to use them.

While many Americans work hard to save money, low-yield accounts may be quietly eroding their purchasing power. Forbes Insights surveyed more than 1,000 affluent U.S. consumers and uncovered a costly blind spot. Only 6% say their savings accounts are optimized for maximum yield, and nearly half believe they're leaving at least $2,500 on the table annually by keeping cash in low-return accounts. This report explores the true cost of low returns, examines the inertia that keeps people locked into traditional banks, and identifies barriers such as trust concerns and account complexity. We also present practical strategies for optimizing your savings strategy aligned with your financial goals and timelines.

To understand where business leaders see the most significant potential for modernization in B2B payments, American Express and Forbes Insights conducted an online survey of 520 senior executives from large U.S. organizations, including leaders in the C-suite. More than three-quarters (77%) of surveyed executives said payment innovation is a critical driver of business growth and differentiation, directly impacting business outcomes. But security and fraud prevention remain a topmost concern and a major focus of the survey. Nearly every executive surveyed (90%) said that effective security and fraud prevention in B2B payments is essential to their organization's operational and financial future. In this report, we examine the challenges and opportunities business leaders face as they modernize their B2B payment infrastructure and processes. We also outline key steps executives are taking to build payment ecosystems that cut costs, reduce fraud, streamline workflows and manage security risks.

This report, "Enterprise Payments Playbook: Insights From Retail, F&B And Hospitality Leaders On The Future Of Commerce," by Forbes Insights in partnership with FreedomPay and Stripe, examines how businesses are modernizing their payment systems amidst evolving commerce dynamics. The report is based on a survey of 250 senior and C-suite executives globally in the retail, food and beverage, and hospitality industries.

Based on a survey of 50 U.S. C-suite executives conducted in early 2025 by Forbes Insights in collaboration with KPMG, the report explores the future of legal operations from the perspective of US C-Suite senior leadership. By analyzing how businesses are approaching their legal support needs within the fast-changing landscape of contract management, rising regulatory pressures and tech transformation, we uncover key challenges, identify potential solutions, and chart a roadmap for seizing the transformative business efficiencies and cost savings possible with legal managed services.

To gain perspective into how data-driven innovation is transforming enterprises and technology leadership, Forbes Insights collaborated with Fivetran, a cloud-based, automated data movement platform, to survey 500 C-suite technology leaders from large U.S.-based organizations. The survey and this report explore the challenges enterprises across industries encounter in moving and integrating data in various forms, the evolving role of technology leaders, as well as their data strategies for AI and beyond.

Microsoft and Adobe partnered with Forbes Insights to survey 500 marketing, technology, and procurement executives across the globe to learn more about their AI journeys and assess their readiness. To harness AI’s capabilities, every marketing team must have a strategy that starts with its people, determines the right technologies, and refines the best processes. This Insights Brief examines the key challenges and outlines an action plan to accelerate AI readiness.

Consumers today expect choices in their payment experience and for all of those choices to be seamless, secure and trusted. However, payments innovation hasn’t progressed evenly across industries, and some have been slow to provide the options consumers prefer. To find out more about consumers’ payment experiences, American Express and Forbes Insights conducted a comprehensive survey of U.S.-based consumers who had made payments to organizations in government services, education, utilities, residential rent, charities, health care and insurance. Respondents were asked to evaluate their preferences and pain points.

Cloud-native development is accelerating the creation and distribution of new enterprise applications, with automation driving efficiency and resilience. But the essential applications that power large organizations—the ones that generate revenue or protect sensitive information—do not typically move very quickly, says Christopher Cyrus, Tanzu Spring GTM lead at Broadcom, an application development and deployment platform and an Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner. There’s a clear need for streamlined platform engineering that reduces the load on development teams and improves the creation, deployment and security of enterprise applications.

In this report, we explore why industry cloud—a hyperpersonalized ecosystem of tools and applications finely tailored to industry needs—is the transformational platform for businesses as they race to experiment with AI and infuse its capabilities across every layer of the organization.

To better understand how business leaders are preparing for the future of B2B payments, American Express partnered with Forbes Insights on a survey of 505 U.S. based business leaders representing a variety of industries. This data-rich report explores reveals their perspectives and priorities, charts how the landscape may be adapting to customer expectations and outlines ideas for managing change.

Forbes Insights in partnership with BMC set out to gauge AIOps uptake, understanding and enthusiasm among enterprise leaders in a global survey of 1,002 IT executives at the C-Suite (CIO or CTO), IT operations, and service management levels in companies with at least $500 million in annual revenue across a range of industries. Conducted in March and April 2024, it captures the perspectives of leaders achieving significant benefits from AIOps, to those seeking to better map and harness their expanding IT estate, to those just starting their AI journey. Their collective responses offer a cross-industry snapshot of the current state of AIOps understanding, adoption and opportunity.

The modern world may be interconnected on digital networks, but much of our economy still depends on moving physical items from A to B. All too often, the digital left hand doesn’t know what the real-world right hand is doing. The solution? Bridge the physical and digital by adding unique identities to individual products. “Every physical product in the world, at some point, will have a digital identity, a digital voice and a digital life,” says Deon Stander, president and CEO of Avery Dennison, a global leader in materials science and digital identification solutions founded in 1935. In this Insights Brief, learn more about the tangible manifestations of connecting physical and digital worlds—and how bridging them will help business leaders tackle tomorrow’s greatest enterprise challenges.

Companies are navigating an unprecedented mix of market dynamics and new disruptive technologies, presenting considerable opportunity as well as risk. The insights in this report are intended to serve as valuable guideposts as you create your digital product roadmap—to help capture market share and drive profitable growth. In today’s competitive environment, if you can get your digital products right, the return will be invaluable.

Deploying GenAI is not without its complications. To deliver maximum value for organizations, AI must analyze internal data. For executives with data safety hardwired in their cloud strategy—which is to say, every executive—this can raise red flags. Enter cloud economics: a framework for understanding the benefits of cloud computing, its impact on an organization, its related costs and expected benefits as well as the measures necessary to safeguard data. Having rigorous and judicious cloud economics is essential for every executive looking to tap into GenAI’s potential. To learn more, we spoke with three executives from Wipro—a global leader in IT services and consulting—about the future of the cloud and GenAI, and why cloud economics is critical to success.

The challenge for financial and technology executives is choosing the most cost-effective and sustainable options while managing the growing complexity of an expanding menu of payment options and balancing greater convenience against greater risk. The best payment solutions not only will offer users the choices they expect, but also help organizations manage accounting processes, provide better treasury management and optimize financial operations more broadly.

To learn more about what business leaders think about payments, American Express partnered with Forbes Insights to commission a survey of 501 technology and finance executives at organizations with revenues above $300 million. This report will explain that collaboration is the key to not only a successful holistic payment system but also to risk management and fraud prevention. Ultimately, these systems can build trust with customers and increase the market share for businesses that build them well.

Financial services organizations are constantly challenged by cybersecurity threats. Customers demand safety, security and convenience in equal measures. At the same time, cybercriminals—equipped with a growing arsenal of automated tools and AI models—demand unfettered access to what isn’t theirs. Forbes and Arculus surveyed 200 business leaders across banking and financial services to explore how their organizations juggle security and customer experience while implementing the solutions they need to compete. In this report, we detail their top challenges and takeaways.

In a preceding report, The Unlikely New Frontier Of Enterprise Growth, Forbes Insights in collaboration with audit, tax, advisory and consulting firm Crowe LLP published the findings of a study which surveyed success factors among business leaders across industries. That research, conducted October to December of 2022, revealed that organizations with executives who identify volatility as an opportunity, rather than a hindrance, pull ahead of rivals at challenging times. To build on the findings of that previous study’s findings, and better understand its implications in an ever-evolving business landscape, Forbes Insights in collaboration with Crowe LLP conducted a new survey of 500 industry leaders of companies with $500 million or more in yearly revenues.

Auto leaders are increasingly turning to software as they define their businesses and transform their products. But what does that look like exactly? And how is software-centric thinking shaping innovation across a vehicle’s lifecycle—from its design, development and manufacturing to its deployment and operations? Forbes and Wind River conducted a survey of 200 business leaders in the auto industry to find out. In this report, we explore their perspectives and uncover tangible takeaways to help them compete in this industry’s new chapter.

A 2022 Forbes Research survey found that while most CIOs report experiencing more cyberattacks, only 37% say they’re adequately prepared to address new threats. As they navigate this fraught landscape, many business leaders are passing up opportunities to refresh their approach to firewall protection. In this report, you'll learn from the following three executives from Palo Alto Networks about exactly how and why software firewalls deliver enhanced security, agility and integration to adopting organizations.

In an era defined by rapid technological advancements and a fast-evolving business landscape, an organization’s ability to harness data and AI will set it apart from the competition. But using data and AI to drive value and transform business is a profound challenge. Enterprises are limited by current capabilities, organizational culture and the need for cost- effective scale. To learn how organizations can reveal their full potential, Teradata partnered with Forbes Insights to survey 1,001 global business leaders and find out how their organizations are succeeding with data and AI, as well as identify where improvement is needed.

CEOs today are navigating a U.S. economy that has entered an age of compound volatility, which is defined by risks to growth and structural changes that raise the cost of doing business and leave little room for error. This year’s KPMG CEO Outlook survey analyzed insights from more than 1,300 CEOs at large companies globally, including 400 in the United States, to evaluate how they are navigating compound volatility. While CEOs remain confident in the long-term growth prospects of U.S. and global economies, confidence is more subdued when it comes to the growth prospects of their companies.

Armed with the right data, analytical tools and organizational discipline, leaders can turn insights into action. But how do global business leaders perceive the data, analytical tools and platforms currently available? What are their near-term goals for data-driven analytics, and are they on course to meet them? What challenges and barriers do they face to ensure data-driven collaboration and understand the customer journey through data and analytics? This Forbes Insights report, prepared in collaboration with Tableau and Deloitte Digital, uses the real-world assessment and goals of 650 global business leaders to address these questions. The result is a road map to effectively use data to power analytics-driven decisions and action.

Gaining a competitive edge requires building inventive products and services to attract and retain customers. For more mature industries like banking, many leaders find that outdated, underperforming legacy infrastructure is getting in the way. How is this affecting their ability to serve customers and compete with peers? To learn more, Forbes partnered with banking software provider Thought Machine to survey 150 U.S.-based banking leaders. This summary report explores four key findings from the survey data and shares actionable thought leadership to help banking leaders modernize.

The banking industry is changing fast. Today, many banks are struggling to keep up with the savvy fintech shops providing seamless experiences for customers. For a pulse check on this digitalization, Forbes partnered with core banking and payments software provider Thought Machine on a survey of industry leaders. In this report, we explore their perspectives and examine the shifting landscape of banking modernization—along with its risks, opportunities and rates of adoption.

This annual report from the professional services firm reveals the top findings from a survey of 400 U.S. CEOs—the majority of whom are confident about growth and the resilience of their companies in the near term. As CEOs have been preparing for a recession by implementing new strategies to drive efficiency and expansion, they are also pursuing transformative growth via mergers and acquisitions. The survey found that a majority of CEOs are considering strategic deals to propel their businesses. The report also explains how CEOs are looking to turn risk into opportunity by focusing on technology, ESG and talent.

Find out how companies are accelerating digitization efforts and refocusing others as disruptions related to the pandemic subside. The report reveals the results of survey—conducted by Forbes Insights in association with American Express—that captured the perspectives of more than 500 executives who work in finance, procurement, treasury and payments.

Learn how companies can create work experiences that meet employee expectations in this report, which was produced by Forbes Insights in association with American Express. The report reveals the results of survey that captured the perspectives of more than 500 executives who work in finance, procurement, treasury and payments.

Representation of women in the financial sector has evolved in recent years—with some parts of the industry making more progress than others. This report, a collaboration between Freddie Mac and Forbes Insights, explores the representation of women in the financial sector and what it takes to create a workplace that offers equal opportunities to women at every level of an organization. It looks at where the industry stands today and the double-edged impact of the pandemic on career paths. Remote work, which has become common during the pandemic, helps with work-life balance but it also creates a new, untested environment for career advancement.

A new survey, conducted by Forbes Insights and Glassbox, reveals that digital customer experience (CX) is vital for business—and an important competitive differentiator. Organizations are seeing a positive correlation between improved digital CX and profitability, and yet many are still grappling with the challenges of implementing and maintaining a long-term digital CX strategy. Learn more about these findings and the state of digital CX today in this new report.

In this report from Forbes Insights, in association with EXL, C-Suite leaders share their top priorities and biggest challenges as they confront the era of mass competitive disruption.

Even though wealthy Millennials have secured a financial advantage at a young age, they are far more anxious than older generations about transferring that wealth to the next generation. That’s the key finding from a new survey conducted by Northwestern Mutual and Forbes of 500 Americans with at least $1 million in investable assets. Choosing to go it alone when it comes to wealth transfer planning is another area where wealthy Millennials diverge from other generations, the survey found, and that tendency could explain why this generation is wracked with so much worry. In this report, we’ll take a close look at the issues that most concern Millennials and suggest steps they can take to feel more assured when it comes to wealth transfer and estate planning.

How have small and midsize businesses (SMBs) fared during a period of higher cyber threat and how are they staying secure? To find out, Intel, with Forbes Insights, surveyed more than 1,000 SMB IT decision-makers in late 2021. Our report provides a detailed view of a business’s security posture now.

Organizations that succeed in today’s economy have something in common: They’re powered by motivated workers who bring a sense of belonging, ownership and inspiration to their roles. This report, produced by Forbes Insights in conjunction with Microsoft, explores how to foster great employee experience now.

Today's enterprises are networks of dispersed employees, contractors and partners, all working with their own devices and systems, creating a vast variety of endpoints. Modernizing this complex ecosystem may seem daunting, but it’s urgent that businesses start incorporating multiple modes of computing—including desktop, mobile, physical, virtual and edge environments—into a thoughtfully designed, cutting-edge digital landscape. Explore this report and learn how to start your endpoint modernization journey today.

The future of finance technology is bright and arriving daily, and most executives are ready to greet it with open arms. They expect this technology to deliver more accurate and reliable data; drive deeper insights into their businesses; detect heightened risk factors; and help their finance functions identify data outliers and anomalies—ideally, in real time. These insights and more emerged from a survey of 250 finance executives conducted by Forbes Insights in collaboration with KPMG LLP (KPMG) in May 2021.

This year’s U.S. CEO Outlook, which is based on a survey of 400 CEOs from some of the country’s largest firms, explores how leaders are preparing their organizations for the post-pandemic future. The research, which was developed in collaboration with KPMG, found that as CEOs manage the impacts of Covid-19, they’re optimistic about the economic recovery and are focused on being plugged-in, people-first and purpose-led to grow their companies. This report explores these findings in more detail and highlights perspective from leading U.S. CEOs.

In today’s world, technology has changed the way we manage businesses, serve customers and plan for the future. ‌‌To better understand the challenges IT leaders are facing and how they’re acquiring the assets they need, Dell Technologies, Intel and Forbes Insights have partnered to survey 800 executives and IT decision-makers. This report explores various IT consumption models and the benefits organizations are seeing from leveraging flexible IT-based models.  

The link between customer experience and revenue is long-established. But new research shows that the situation is far nuanced—and interesting—than we’ve thought. Based on three separate data sources, this report shows that customer experience is locked with employee experience in an intricate relationship in which one depends on the other to gain maximum results. In addition, the right strategic efforts have critical implications that can result in higher revenue growth.

The mortgage industry was in hot pursuit of digitization well before the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, the crisis and its associated effects are accelerating those efforts. Last year's survey indicated that digitization was already underway with the goal of transforming key home mortgage processes. But then came the one-two punch of a pandemic followed closely by historically low-interest rates. In this year's report, we explore how—driven by consumer, regulatory and workforce needs as well as a surge in business—mortgage providers are accelerating what had already been keenly focused efforts to embrace digital technology.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed many aspects of American life, including the way people are giving. To carry out their missions, charitable organizations must change their approach to raising funds to deal with canceled fundraisers, disrupted operations, and record declines in consumer spending. You and your clients can ensure their philanthropic giving can make a greater impact, now more than ever. Submit your information below to download this report and learn more about how generous gifts can help St. Jude save the lives of children across the country and around the world. [pardot-form id="6465" title="St Jude Gated Report Oct 2020"]

This year’s U.S. CEO Outlook comes at a trying time as CEOs continue to navigate their businesses through uncharted territory of the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing economic uncertainty and social unrest across the country. To better understand how firms are managing today’s new reality, KPMG and Forbes Insights surveyed hundreds of U.S. CEOs from some of the country’s largest firms, first in January and then again in July and August. As our research found, U.S. CEOs have approached the challenges and opportunities before them with confidence. They have relied on technology solutions to adjust to the changing needs of their customers and employees and placed a greater emphasis on values, purpose and culture as well as Environmental, Social and Governance initiatives. This report explores these findings in more detail, highlights perspective from leading U.S. CEOs and outlines how firms can ensure their organizations emerge from the pandemic stronger than ever.

Spurred by technology-driven market shifts and current events, enterprises are expediting projects intended to move more application data and workloads into public clouds. With this trend comes heightened concerns about the continued suitability of longstanding security practices, especially when it comes to securing applications that are born in the cloud. DevOps, which has traditionally synchronized development and operations teams, has emerged as a means of integrating security throughout cloud-centric enterprises. In this new DevSecOps model, security is added to new and existing applications automatically throughout the development and delivery cycle. By prioritizing automation and collaboration, DevSecOps enables application work to flow seamlessly and safely, from inception to production. In this executive brief, which was produced in collaboration with Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud, we outline guidelines for integrating DevSecOps into your organization.

As businesses‌ ‌face unprecedented disruption, are their supply chains equipped to evolve as well?‌ To position themselves for success, today’s leaders should prioritize a close alignment of ‌supply‌ ‌chain‌ ‌initiatives‌ and the organization’s broader‌ ‌digital‌ ‌transformation. When both areas are addressed at once, companies can better ‌coordinate‌ ‌workflows‌ ‌and‌ ‌integrate‌ ‌advanced‌ technologies‌ ‌across‌ ‌the‌ ‌entire‌ ‌enterprise.‌ ‌ In this report, Forbes Insights and Kinaxis have partnered to explore how leading-edge‌ ‌supply‌ ‌chains‌ can harness digital‌ ‌integration‌ ‌across‌ ‌all‌ ‌relevant‌ ‌functions‌—‌boards, CEOs, CFOs and CSCOs—‌and‌ leverage state-of-the-art‌ ‌technology to gain a competitive edge. When‌ ‌effectively ‌merged,‌ ‌digital‌ ‌transformation‌ ‌and‌ ‌supply‌ ‌chain‌ ‌become‌ ‌twin‌ ‌drivers‌ ‌of‌ ‌success—differentiating‌ ‌performance‌ ‌and‌ ‌catapulting‌ ‌a‌ ‌business‌ ‌past‌ ‌its‌ ‌competitors.‌

Transforming customer experience requires that companies put customers first. The most competitive industry leaders strive to build authentic customer relationships based on trust, loyalty and agility. Cultivating these fruitful relationships starts with data-driven technology, which enables brands to really understand their customers. In partnership with SAS, Forbes Insights explores how companies can enhance their customer relationships and foster loyalty and trust by prioritizing cutting-edge marketing tools and analytics. With the help of this roadmap for innovative marketers, organizations can better serve customers while also transforming internally—empowering staff to embrace a customer-obsessed mindset.

A Forbes Insights survey of more than 1,000 global businesses, conducted in partnership with ASQExellence and ASQ, reveals how the continuing rapid expansion of the digital economy—along with businesses’ ability to manage sudden economic disruption, such as the recent COVID-19 crisis—has significant implications for the ability of organizations to achieve and sustain quality through excellence. Is technology changing the way enterprises look at quality? Is it enabling quality, or is it introducing new types of challenges? Technology is cutting both ways, the research finds. There is a high degree of adoption of digital transformation, seen as integral to quality efforts. However, the full impact of technology has yet to be felt. Greater support is needed to train and prepare the people who will successfully deliver this transformation. In this executive brief, learn more about the state of quality management today and dive into key findings from the Forbes Insights-ASQExcellence and ASQ research, along with high-level executive insights on how a quality-driven culture can help organizations maintain customer service and employee cohesion through crisis.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologies such as machine learning and robotic process automation have the potential to transform the mortgage lending industry. To explore business leaders’ perspectives and preparedness, Forbes Insights partnered with Roostify to conduct a survey of 200 senior executives from the U.S. mortgage industry. This report delivers findings from the survey and uncovers ten takeaways that highlight a crucial message for leaders: adapt swiftly to the AI transformation today or risk disruption.

Is AI ready for prime time in the enterprise? The constellation of technologies that we associate with AI, including machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing, offer rich possibilities and are proving their mettle in pilots and proofs of concept. However, scaling AI to meet enterprise demands is another story. According to research from Forbes Insights, 72% of AI projects are still either being planned or in the pilot stage. In this report, sponsored by IBM, we explore the two essential building blocks needed to take AI initiatives to the next level and serve the fast-changing needs of today’s enterprises: a robust infrastructure and a comprehensive data strategy.

When business conditions demand that companies transform digitally and move to the cloud, it’s critical that chief executives across disciplines get involved—not only those with “information” or “technology” in their three-letter titles. In interviews with five business leaders who have led cloud transformations, Forbes Insights and Palo Alto Networks found that a unified executive team is most effective because technology is only one piece. While each leader’s experience is unique, several other common themes emerged: the critical importance of human capital, why it’s necessary to work in stages and why security needs the attention of all stakeholders throughout the journey. By reading the personal accounts of business leaders who have led cloud transformations across different industries, we hope you find relevant takeaways that you can apply to efforts at your organization—even if your core executive function is something other than tech.

As recent events across the world have shown us, today’s business climate can be altered overnight. Supply chains may suffer disruptions, companies may need to shift to new modes of operations, and carefully crafted sales and marketing strategies may need to be thrown out the window. Emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), can help companies quickly respond to changes in the business environment, recast priorities, shift resources and keep tabs on events on the ground. But embracing new technologies like AI is not easy. While offering powerful solutions, AI simply can’t be implemented and start delivering results right away. In this report, we highlight the top seven challenges organizations face with AI implementations and how to overcome them.

Intense competition, market volatility, sophisticated clients and a demanding regulatory environment continue to raise the stakes in investment risk management. For asset managers, fees and budgets are shrinking. For asset owners—including pension funds, insurance companies and endowments—and asset managers alike, alpha is becoming more elusive, leading to a rise in passive investing and non-traditional asset classes. To better understand how organizations are handling these challenges and harnessing technology-based investment risk management solutions, Forbes Insights, in partnership with FactSet, surveyed 252 asset managers and asset owners from around the globe. This executive brief highlights six key insights into the future of risk technology.

Editor's note: Payments' Potential was commissioned and published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Once viewed simply as a transaction, payments have evolved into an important component of the customer experience, a revenue-generating business model and a primary way of boosting efficiency. But with this new mandate come immense opportunities: Companies that understand the paradigm shift better than their peers stand to gain a competitive edge. With customers seeking to buy what they want, from the channel they prefer, when they want—and have it delivered to their desired location—companies are being measured on their ability to provide these whatever-wherever-whenever experiences. In a Forbes Insights survey of more than 300 executives worldwide, just half say their company can deliver well on the overall customer experience. However, the vast majority of them agree that payments are an integral part of the customer experience. This report covers: what customers are looking for in payments, how data science can enhance security and accelerate business growth, ways to deal with multiple payment models and the complexity of payments when expanding globally.

Faced with increasingly global footprints, remote workers and frequent travel, organizations must often forego meeting place intimacy for expediency. In an era where in-person interaction is increasingly less feasible or even desirable, businesses are learning unified communications featuring video not only fills the void but in many ways can be better than in-person. For a closer look, Forbes Insights has, for a third consecutive year, partnered with video communications provider Zoom to execute a global survey in the Fall of 2019. The following report presents key findings.

It’s essential for organizations to merge strategies across talent and business. Here, Chief Human Resource Officer and Senior Vice President of Internal Communications at Blue Shield of California Mary O’Hara explains what that means—and shares why formulating a people strategy that merges business planning, human capital management and financial strategy is key to fueling positive outcomes for your talent and the overall business. Learn key takeaways for creating your own holistic strategies to enable growth, cultivate strong leadership, create opportunities for staff, optimize the employee experience at your company and more.

Most of those inhabiting the C-suite have an above-average grasp on the core issues in investments and financial wealth planning—they are by nature “planners”—so it’s not surprising that overall, senior executives in the midst of their C-suite service tend to feel confident that their investment management and financial wealth planning strategies are well-conceived and optimized. But is this truly the case? It’s good to be knowledgeable, engaged, competent and confident, but as a Forbes Insights survey of 500 C-suite executives reveals, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. This report, which was produced in collaboration with Northern Trust, highlights five key insights on how C-suite executives approach investment management and financial wealth planning.

As the digital economy grows, the stakes rise for CIOs. Can they use information technology in new and creative ways to enhance their customers’ experiences and fend off market disruptors? While IT itself is a powerful force multiplier in this new environment, moving forward requires leadership that harnesses IT’s power in productive and secure ways. This is an opportunity for CIOs to develop and implement forward-looking strategies for optimizing IT in the cloud era, bringing together existing and state-of-the-art resources. In this Forbes Insights report, sponsored by IBM, learn the 10 key steps CIOs are taking now to fully capitalize on the opportunities offered by cloud.

In 2014, when legislative changes forced Reykjavik Energy Group (REG) to reorganize into a parent company with three separate subsidiaries, many questioned how these disparate entities would be able to work towards a common vision and meet the goals and principles outlined in the firm’s Ownership Strategy. In this brief Forbes Insights case study, sponsored by Brightline, we highlight the principles REG followed to ensure enterprise-wide compliance with its Ownership Strategy and build a culture of trust, transparency and cooperation.

As 5G-fueled hyperconnectivity expands enterprise networks and moves data processing to the edge, technology leaders and engineers must reimagine the data center to stay in the race. Major improvements across data infrastructure, computing capabilities and bandwidth will help organizations adapt as change unfolds. But how prepared are businesses to take on the challenges of more complex network environments? Are they ready to transform? Forbes Insights surveyed IT leaders and data engineers across a range of industries for answers. To learn more about how businesses can upgrade the data center of today into one that truly leverages a hyperconnected, data-fueled future, read the report here.

UAE Vision 2021 is an initiative that aims to make the United Arab Emirates (UAE) a world-leading country. But when a strategic review in 2016 revealed that the program wasn’t on track to meet some of its key targets, the Ministry of Cabinet Affairs and The Future knew it had to act fast. In this brief Forbes Insights case study, sponsored by Brightline, we examine the principles that helped the Ministry of Cabinet Affairs and The Future successfully complete 40+ high-priority challenges under a 100-day deadline and ultimately improve the lives of UAE citizens. Brightline™ (LINK: https://www.brightline.org/) is a Project Management Institute (PMI) (LINK: https://www.pmi.org/) initiative together with leading global organizations dedicated to helping executives bridge the expensive and unproductive gap between strategy design and delivery. Brightline delivers insights and solutions that empower leaders to successfully transform their organization’s vision into reality through strategic initiative management.

Big discoveries and cutting-edge advances in transportation and mobility are unfolding before our eyes. Developments across artificial intelligence, 5G-enabled connectivity, advanced safety technologies and more are propelling businesses to a new era. What’s the key to keeping up? To guide organizations in this transformation, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and Forbes surveyed over 500 executives. Their perspectives shaped this report, offering an in-depth snapshot of the current industry landscape and highlighting smart steps leaders can take as they invent their way to this fascinating future of transportation and mobility.

To remain competitive today, manufacturers must manage a variety of risks from disruptive technologies to geopolitical shifts while taking full advantage of the opportunities these changes offer. But operating in an increasingly volatile sector demands strategic leadership—legal teams with an in-depth understanding of everything from technology risks to evolving regulations. To discover the legal challenges and market opportunities facing the manufacturing industry, Forbes Insights and K&L Gates conducted a survey of more than 200 U.S.-based business and legal executives. These executives hail from organizations large and small in a variety of segments ranging from aerospace and defense to automotive and engineering. By surveying a wide array of participants and interviewing some of today’s leaders in this space, we set out to discover how these executives are responding to rapid change and how these changes are redefining executive and legal roles.

The mortgage industry is going digital, with both its established leaders and its disruptors moving fast to digitize both customer-facing and back-office processes. From lower initiation costs and cycle times to online closings and the possibility of a one-hour clear to close, an industry revolution is underway, one benefiting both lenders and borrowers. This report, based on a Forbes Insights survey of 391 senior U.S.-based lending executives, surveys the new mortgage state of play. It discusses how the dust might settle, describes the challenges that this modernization push faces and makes clear how industry players view the dynamic situation they’re in.

For decades, networking security has been the core element of well-designed cybersecurity programs. The ability to effectively secure corporate networks from hackers, viruses and intruders has been front and center of all cybersecurity efforts. New forces on the horizon are changing perceptions of network security, however. Networks are no longer simply contained within enterprise walls—today’s networks encompass platforms and extend to outside parties, including partners, developers, industry collaborators and customers. In addition, cloud, software as a service and virtualization have become a vital part of enterprise infrastructure, changing the scope of protection. The Internet of Things (IoT) is also bringing new end points and players into corporate network environments. As a result, the size and scope of the enterprise attack surface have grown significantly, with enterprises expanding their reach outward. We explore how organizations are addressing these changes in this report, which is based on a survey of 1,001 enterprises conducted by Forbes Insights, in partnership with VMware. We also outline the trends that will shape networking security management over the coming years.

Across the healthcare industry, medical diagnoses, patient care, and back-office administration are being digitized—driven by both the need for greater efficiency in a highly inefficient patchwork of systems as well as government mandates. With a range of other digital initiatives occurring on many levels, from intelligent devices and monitors to telemedicine, new vistas are opening for healthcare, providing physicians and caregivers real-time access to patient data and appropriate therapies, as well as connecting patients directly to clinicians and organizations. Ultimately, digital transformation will lead to improved patient outcomes—a top priority for every healthcare organization. To better understand how organizations are approaching cybersecurity, Forbes Insights surveyed 1,001 security practitioners and security executives, in partnership with VMware. This brief details the findings among the 150 healthcare respondents.

Nowhere is the disruption of the digital economy being felt more severely than with retailers. Many existing store chains are threatened with extinction as executives struggle to achieve the right balance between having an online and a brick-and-mortar presence. E-commerce, online shopping and online transactions are only increasing, and in-store transactions, supply-chain interactions and payment processes are becoming highly digitized. This digitization of all phases of retail makes for an exponentially expanded attack surface for hackers and other malicious actors. To better understand how organizations are approaching cybersecurity, Forbes Insights surveyed 1,001 security practitioners and security executives, in partnership with VMware. This brief details the findings among the 213 retail respondents. Where appropriate, retail results are contrasted with the overall sample.

While cybersecurity is an initiative that affects all levels of the technology stack, it is most critical at the end-user level. The expansive attack surface represented by the increasing volume and variety of end-user devices means security executives and professionals need to take a hard look at how they are securing these endpoints. These include the devices end-users use to access compute services, be they mobile devices, laptops, desktops or other systems. It also encompasses the rise of virtualization and service layers that enable access to enterprise data and applications. We explore how security executives and practitioners are approaching this critical link in their digital environments in this report, which is based on a survey of 1,001 enterprises conducted by Forbes Insights, in partnership with VMware. We also outline the trends that will shape networking security management over the coming years.

For the financial services sector, real money is at stake when it comes to cybersecurity. Financial services organizations have been battling cybersecurity threats for a long time, and while they’ve taken the lead with comprehensive measures—including implementing new technology—the embrace of digital transformation is only expanding the attack surface—and risk. To better understand how organizations are approaching cybersecurity, Forbes Insights surveyed 1,001 security practitioners and security executives, in partnership with VMware. This brief details the findings among the 202 respondents within financial services.