Sprinklr is adding another industry endorsement to its AI-first strategy. The Unified Customer Experience Management (Unified-CXM) platform has been named a winner in the Innovation Products category of the 2026 BIG Innovation Awards, with judges recognizing Sprinklr’s AI agents as a standout application of artificial intelligence purpose-built for customer experience.

The award, run by the Business Intelligence Group, highlights companies and products that deliver applied innovation with measurable real-world impact. For Sprinklr, the recognition reinforces its positioning as an AI-native CX platform at a time when enterprises are under pressure to move beyond experimentation and prove tangible ROI from AI investments.

Why Sprinklr’s AI agents stood out

Unlike generic AI copilots or add-on automation layers, Sprinklr’s AI agents are designed to operate autonomously within customer experience workflows. They observe signals, reason across unified customer data, and take action across marketing, customer care, research, and commerce use cases.

That goal-oriented design is increasingly important as enterprises struggle with fragmented CX stacks and siloed data. Instead of forcing teams to manually translate insights into actions, Sprinklr’s AI agents are built to close that loop—helping organizations operate faster, more consistently, and at scale.

According to the Business Intelligence Group, this kind of applied intelligence is what now defines innovation.

“True innovation is no longer about chasing the latest buzzwords,” said Russ Fordyce, Chief Recognition Officer at the Business Intelligence Group. “It’s about building intelligent platforms, automating workflows with purpose, and making trust, privacy, and resilience the foundation of every breakthrough.”

That framing aligns closely with how enterprise buyers are evaluating AI today: not on novelty, but on reliability, governance, and outcomes.

From AI features to AI systems

Sprinklr’s win reflects a broader shift in enterprise software. The market is moving away from point AI features toward system-level intelligence—AI that is embedded into the platform itself and connected to unified data.

Sprinklr’s AI agents sit on top of its unified CX data foundation, which combines customer signals across channels and functions. This allows the agents to operate with full context, rather than reacting to isolated events or partial views of the customer.

“AI is only transformative when it’s deeply connected to real business outcomes,” said Karthik Suri, Chief Product Officer at Sprinklr. “Powered by unified data, rich customer context, and the ability to turn insights into action, Sprinklr AI Agents bring enterprise-grade intelligence to every customer touchpoint.”

That emphasis on action is critical. Many enterprises already have access to AI-driven insights; far fewer have systems that can act on those insights responsibly and at scale.

Trust, privacy, and enterprise readiness

Another reason Sprinklr’s AI approach resonates is its focus on enterprise-grade requirements. As AI becomes embedded into customer-facing workflows, concerns around trust, privacy, compliance, and resilience are moving to the forefront—especially in regulated industries.

The 2026 BIG Innovation Awards highlighted this trend explicitly, noting that winners are prioritizing security and governance as core innovation principles, not afterthoughts. Sprinklr’s positioning as an AI-native platform built for large enterprises aligns with that expectation, particularly as brands look to deploy autonomous systems without introducing risk.

What this signals for MarTech and CX leaders

Sprinklr joins 159 companies recognized across industries including healthcare, financial services, logistics, manufacturing, and enterprise technology. The common thread among winners is clear: innovation is no longer defined by having AI, but by how effectively it is applied.

For MarTech and CX leaders, Sprinklr’s recognition underscores an important takeaway. The next phase of AI adoption will favor platforms that unify data, automate intelligently, and deliver outcomes across the entire customer lifecycle—not just isolated use cases.

As enterprises scale AI across marketing, care, and commerce, awards like this signal which vendors are moving from promise to practice. For Sprinklr, the BIG Innovation Award reinforces its claim that AI-driven CX is no longer theoretical—it’s operational.

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Emplifi is betting that the most valuable marketing insights aren’t hiding in dashboards—they’re happening in comment threads. The customer engagement and social media marketing platform has announced a strategic partnership with Reddit that integrates Reddit’s Enterprise API directly into the Emplifi ecosystem, elevating Reddit from a passive listening source to a core decision signal inside Emplifi Fuel, the company’s intelligent execution engine.

The move reflects a broader shift in MarTech: brands no longer want to simply monitor conversations. They want to translate real consumer intent into decisions they can act on—quickly, confidently, and at scale.

Why Reddit matters now

With more than 443 million weekly active unique visitors and over 100,000 active communities, Reddit has long been a goldmine of unfiltered consumer opinion. Product comparisons, pricing complaints, feature wish lists, and brutally honest reviews often surface there long before they appear in traditional social channels or surveys.

Until now, that data has mostly been used for social listening or sentiment tracking. Emplifi’s integration pushes it further upstream. Reddit conversations now feed directly into Emplifi Fuel, where AI analyzes aggregated discussion patterns and turns them into recommended objectives and tactics inside Emplifi’s vertical Command Center.

In short, Reddit becomes less of a noise source—and more of a strategic input.

From listening to execution

The defining feature of the partnership is how Reddit data is used. Instead of showing brands what people are saying and leaving interpretation to analysts, Emplifi applies AI-powered analytics to synthesize large volumes of conversation into actionable insights tied to business outcomes.

According to Emplifi CEO Ohad Hecht, that shift is essential.

“Commerce, care, and social are not end goals themselves; they are enablers,” Hecht said. “By feeding Reddit’s authentic data into Emplifi Fuel, we’re not just showing brands what people are saying—we’re turning aggregated insights into recommended actions.”

This framing aligns with a growing industry demand for tools that bridge strategy and execution. As marketing teams face tighter budgets and higher expectations, insight without action is increasingly seen as wasted effort.

Vertical intelligence, not generic signals

One of the more interesting aspects of the Emplifi–Reddit partnership is its vertical focus. Rather than treating Reddit data as a one-size-fits-all input, Emplifi applies it within industry-specific workflows:

• Retail & eCommerce: Reddit discussions around shipping delays, return policies, and pricing sensitivity feed directly into CX playbooks. Brands can address friction points before they show up in churn metrics.

• CPG: Authentic reactions to product launches and influencer campaigns help teams fine-tune content strategies, ride emerging trends, or contain negative sentiment early.

• Sports & Entertainment: Fan conversations around lineups, game-day experiences, and merchandise drops inform engagement and support workflows in real time—often while the moment still matters.

• All brands: From finance and beauty to travel and tech, Reddit’s breadth makes it a live testing ground for ideas, messaging, and sentiment shifts across categories.

This verticalization reflects a broader MarTech trend: insights are only useful when they’re contextual. Generic sentiment scores rarely drive decisions; industry-specific signals do.

Closing the gap between insight and action

Beyond analytics, the partnership also tightens execution. Emplifi customers can now publish directly to Reddit through Emplifi’s unified social workflows, managing Reddit engagement alongside other channels from a single interface.

That matters because Reddit plays by different rules. Brands that treat it like another broadcast channel often struggle. By unifying listening, insight, and publishing, Emplifi is positioning Reddit as a channel that can be managed thoughtfully—without fragmenting workflows or creating yet another standalone tool.

The integration also enables faster risk detection. Emplifi’s AI-powered listening and summarization tools can flag viral moments or potential issues hours or days before they surface on more mainstream platforms, giving brands more time to respond intelligently.

Reddit’s enterprise push

For Reddit, the partnership underscores its growing push into enterprise-grade data and analytics. While the platform has always been influential, brands have historically struggled to operationalize Reddit insights at scale.

“Reddit is where real conversations happen, shaping decisions that influence markets,” said Jonathan Flesher, VP of Business Development & Partnerships at Reddit. “Emplifi understands that brands need to bridge the gap between listening and doing.”

That sentiment mirrors Reddit’s broader evolution—from community platform to strategic intelligence layer for brands willing to engage respectfully and responsibly.

What this means for MarTech leaders

The Emplifi–Reddit integration highlights a clear direction for modern MarTech stacks: the future belongs to platforms that turn raw signals into guided action. As AI becomes table stakes, differentiation will come from how insights are applied—not just how they’re collected.

For marketing leaders, the takeaway is practical. Authentic consumer conversations are already shaping brand perception and purchase decisions. Tools that can capture that intent, contextualize it by industry, and embed it directly into daily workflows offer a tangible advantage.

In positioning Reddit as an analytical signal rather than a side channel, Emplifi is effectively turning the internet’s largest focus group into an always-on decision engine. For brands competing on speed, relevance, and customer understanding, that may prove hard to ignore.

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Cadent is bolstering its executive bench as demand accelerates for predictive, full-funnel advertising solutions. The company has appointed Kim Tingler as Chief People Officer and Daniella Krieger as Senior Vice President of Marketing, signaling a dual focus on scaling its organization and sharpening its go-to-market execution.

The leadership moves come as advertisers and agencies increasingly look for platforms that can unify data, forecasting, and activation across channels—while also demanding clearer differentiation in an ad tech market crowded with AI claims.

“As Cadent enters its next phase of growth, strengthening both our people strategy and our go-to-market leadership is essential,” said CEO Nick Troiano. “Kim brings deep experience building cultures that help organizations grow with intention, while Daniella has a proven ability to translate complex technology into clear, compelling value for the market.”

Why these roles matter now

Cadent operates at the intersection of predictive analytics, media planning, and activation—areas seeing renewed attention as brands push for better forecasting, outcome-based buying, and full-funnel measurement. Scaling that kind of platform requires more than product innovation; it demands organizational maturity and sharper storytelling.

The appointment of a Chief People Officer reflects Cadent’s recognition that talent, structure, and culture are strategic assets, not back-office concerns. At the same time, bringing in a senior marketing leader with deep ad tech experience suggests the company is preparing for a more competitive phase of market education and brand differentiation.

Kim Tingler: scaling culture with intention

Tingler joins Cadent with more than 15 years of experience leading people strategy and organizational transformation across media and technology companies. Most recently, she served as SVP of People and Culture at Rokt, where she set the agenda for the people function during a period of growth. Before that, she held senior HR leadership roles at A+E Networks and spent over a decade at NBCUniversal, supporting advertising sales and marketing teams.

Her background is particularly relevant for an ad tech company navigating growth without losing focus. High-growth platforms often struggle to maintain performance and engagement as teams scale quickly—a challenge Tingler has spent much of her career addressing.

In her role as CPO, Tingler will focus on ensuring Cadent’s organization is structured to support both business expansion and employee success.

“Building an organization that is intentional about how it develops, supports, and empowers its people is critical,” Tingler said. “My focus is making sure our leaders, teams, and culture evolve in step with the business.”

Daniella Krieger: clarifying Cadent’s market narrative

On the go-to-market side, Krieger brings more than 17 years of experience across brand, product, and GTM marketing in ad tech and digital media. She joins Cadent from MiQ, where she served as SVP of U.S. Marketing and led the go-to-market strategy for MiQ Sigma, the company’s AI-powered programmatic advertising platform.

At Cadent, Krieger will oversee brand and product marketing, with a mandate to clearly articulate the value of Cadent’s unified, predictive platform to advertisers, agencies, and partners.

That clarity is increasingly important. As AI becomes ubiquitous in advertising technology, differentiation is less about whether a platform uses AI and more about how it delivers measurable outcomes.

“Innovation, especially AI, is transforming advertising at unprecedented speed,” Krieger said. “But it’s also made differentiation more critical. I’m excited to help bring a unified platform to market that cuts through complexity and clearly communicates Cadent’s strengths.”

A broader signal for AdTech and MarTech

Cadent’s leadership changes reflect a wider trend across AdTech and MarTech: companies are investing just as heavily in people and positioning as they are in technology. Predictive advertising, full-funnel measurement, and AI-driven optimization are no longer emerging concepts—they’re expected capabilities.

As adoption accelerates, vendors must scale responsibly, maintain trust with clients, and communicate value in a way that resonates with both technical and business stakeholders. Cadent’s decision to strengthen both its people leadership and marketing leadership suggests it’s preparing for that next stage of competition.

For advertisers and agencies evaluating predictive advertising platforms, the move is a reminder that execution matters as much as innovation. The platforms that win will be those that combine advanced technology with strong teams, clear narratives, and the operational maturity to deliver consistently at scale.

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The Walt Disney Company is reshaping how it markets itself to the world. The media and entertainment giant has announced the creation of a new enterprise-wide marketing and brand organization, a move designed to bring tighter alignment across its sprawling businesses and deliver a more consistent, connected experience for consumers. To lead the effort, Disney has named longtime executive Asad Ayaz as its first Chief Marketing and Brand Officer.

The new role formalizes something Disney has increasingly needed as its portfolio has expanded across studios, streaming, parks, sports, and consumer products: a single executive with authority over brand coherence and marketing strategy at the company level.

Why Disney is centralizing marketing now

Disney’s businesses have never been more diverse—or more interconnected. From blockbuster franchises and Disney+ originals to theme parks, cruises, ESPN, and global consumer products, the company’s brands touch audiences across dozens of platforms and experiences.

Until now, much of that marketing muscle has lived within individual segments. The new enterprise marketing organization is meant to harness that collective strength, aligning teams and capabilities to ensure campaigns feel connected, brand standards remain consistent, and audiences can move seamlessly between Disney experiences.

CEO Bob Iger framed the move as both a brand and consumer imperative.

“As our businesses have evolved, it’s clear that we need a company-wide role that ensures brand consistency and allows consumers today to seamlessly interact with our products and experiences,” Iger said, calling the new CMO and brand role “critical for this moment.”

For marketers watching the space, the message is clear: as brands scale across channels and business models, decentralized marketing structures can become a liability.

Asad Ayaz’s expanded mandate

Ayaz steps into the role with more than two decades at Disney and deep familiarity with its most visible brands. He previously spent eight years as President of Marketing for The Walt Disney Studios, where he oversaw campaigns for theatrical releases across Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Studios. He also led marketing for Disney+ during its growth into a global streaming platform.

In 2023, Ayaz was named Disney’s first-ever Chief Brand Officer, taking responsibility for company-wide brand stewardship, alliances, and major events. The new appointment expands that remit significantly—placing enterprise marketing execution alongside brand governance under one leader.

Disney’s segment leaders were explicit about why Ayaz was chosen.

“Asad is an exceptional creative leader with strong strategic and operational prowess and deep experience across Disney and its brands,” said Disney Entertainment co-chairs Alan Bergman and Dana Walden, Disney Experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro, and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro in a joint statement.

That combination of creativity and operational scale is essential for a role that must balance local flexibility with global consistency.

What the new organization will change

According to Disney, the unified marketing group will connect shared capabilities and modern marketing tools across the company, improving continuity and agility. While specifics were not disclosed, the implications are significant.

For a company like Disney, this could mean:

• More coordinated global launches across film, streaming, parks, and consumer products

• Shared data, insights, and marketing technology across segments

• Faster execution as teams reuse frameworks and assets rather than rebuilding them

• Stronger brand governance as franchises expand into new formats and regions

Ayaz will report directly to Bob Iger as Chief Marketing and Brand Officer, while also working closely with Disney’s segment chairs to lead marketing efforts across business units—a dual-reporting structure that underscores both central authority and segment accountability.

A broader signal for enterprise marketing

Disney’s move mirrors a growing trend among global brands: elevating marketing and brand leadership to the enterprise level. As customer journeys span platforms, devices, and experiences, fragmented marketing strategies can erode brand equity and dilute impact.

In an era of streaming competition, experiential commerce, and IP-driven ecosystems, Disney’s brand is one of its most valuable assets. Centralizing marketing around that asset suggests the company is preparing for a more integrated future—one where franchises, experiences, and distribution channels are marketed as parts of a single narrative.

For MarTech and marketing leaders, the takeaway is timely. Technology, data, and AI have made cross-channel execution possible—but organizational alignment is what ultimately determines whether brands can deliver cohesive experiences at scale.

By appointing a Chief Marketing and Brand Officer and backing the role with an enterprise-wide organization, Disney is betting that brand consistency and connected marketing will be as critical to growth as content itself.

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As AI agents become a permanent fixture in customer service operations, Calabrio is betting that quality management can no longer live inside platform silos.

The workforce and conversation intelligence company has launched Calabrio Omni Agent Intelligence, a new capability embedded within Calabrio ONE that provides a single, vendor-agnostic view of quality and performance across both human agents and AI agents. The solution is already available to Calabrio ONE customers and supports all major CCaaS, CRM, ITSM, and AI agent platforms.

Why It Matters: AI Has Outpaced Quality Governance

Contact centers today operate with a blended workforce—human agents, AI agents, and AI assistants—spread across multiple systems. But performance and quality are often measured separately, depending on the platform.

That fragmented approach creates blind spots.

Leaders may see how an AI bot performs in isolation, but not how it impacts human workload, sentiment, handle times, or customer outcomes across the full journey. According to Calabrio, that gap limits accountability and makes it difficult to understand whether automation is actually improving CX—or quietly degrading it.

One Quality Framework Across the Entire Stack

Omni Agent Intelligence acts as a unified AI quality layer, standardizing interaction data from disparate platforms into a single view of agent performance. Unlike platform-specific analytics, it applies a shared quality framework across both AI and human agents, while still allowing scoring criteria to be tailored by agent type.

This enables organizations to:

• Compare AI and human agent performance consistently

• Identify weak handoffs between automation and people

• Detect underperforming AI agents early

• Measure how automation affects sentiment, AHT, and outcomes

“Customer service can’t keep treating people and AI as separate worlds,” said Calabrio CEO Dave Rhodes. “Omni Agent Intelligence lets leaders see how teams and technology actually work together—and make decisions based on real insight instead of guesswork.”

Built for Constantly Changing Tech Stacks

As enterprises experiment with AI agents from multiple vendors—and frequently change CCaaS platforms—quality programs often break or require expensive custom BI work.

Calabrio positions Omni Agent Intelligence as a more durable alternative. Delivered within Calabrio ONE, it functions as a quality control tower, maintaining consistent measurement even as platforms are added, replaced, or upgraded.

For QM and CX teams, that means governance stays intact without rebuilding dashboards or re-engineering evaluation models every time the stack changes.

Key Capabilities at a Glance

Calabrio highlights several operational benefits:

• Day-one visibility: Out-of-the-box views of AI and human agents, including sentiment, QM scores, trending topics, and AHT

• Improved CX: Better detection of poor automation and handoff failures before they escalate

• Stronger AI ROI measurement: Clear insight into how AI agents impact workload, customer sentiment, and efficiency

• Faster decisions: One consistent framework replaces conflicting vendor-specific reports

• Reduced risk: Unified Auto QM helps surface compliance and performance issues early

• Future-proof flexibility: Quality programs remain stable even as platforms evolve

The Bigger Picture

As AI agents move from pilot projects to frontline roles, enterprises are under pressure to prove they work—not just technically, but operationally and experientially.

Calabrio’s Omni Agent Intelligence reflects a broader industry shift: AI adoption without governance is no longer acceptable. The next phase of customer service innovation will be defined not by how many bots a company deploys, but by how clearly it can measure their impact.

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Marketing teams inside the U.S. contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) sector are entering 2026 with cautious optimism—and a much heavier reliance on data, AI, and outsourced expertise.

That’s the takeaway from Altitude Marketing’s 2026 CDMO Marketing Trends Report, a quantitative study based on survey responses from 149 CDMO marketing leaders. The report benchmarks how life sciences marketers are reshaping go-to-market strategies amid pricing pressure, longer sales cycles, and accelerating technological change.

Growth, But Not a Free-for-All

Despite ongoing market uncertainty, CDMO marketing teams are expanding. Nearly 80% of respondents expect headcount growth in 2026, and a similar share anticipates budget increases.

But the data suggests that growth will be disciplined rather than exuberant. Instead of building large in-house teams, CDMOs are leaning toward hybrid resourcing models. Roughly three-quarters of respondents plan to increase their use of external agencies, signaling a preference for flexibility and specialized expertise over permanent staff expansion.

SEO and AI Search Overtake Traditional Channels

The report highlights a decisive shift away from legacy marketing tactics. Organic SEO and AI-driven search emerged as the most effective sources of qualified leads in 2025, outperforming trade shows, print advertising, and even paid digital media.

That momentum is expected to continue. Respondents say these inbound, content-led channels will command the largest share of marketing investment in 2026, reflecting how CDMO buyers increasingly research partners long before engaging sales teams.

For an industry built on trust, regulatory rigor, and long-term partnerships, educational content and discoverability appear to be winning out over splashy top-of-funnel tactics.

AI Moves From Experiment to Infrastructure

AI adoption among CDMO marketers is no longer tentative. According to the report, 70% of respondents now use AI tools daily, primarily for data analysis, information discovery, and content repurposing.

The efficiency gains are tangible. Most respondents estimate saving five to ten hours per week, underscoring that AI has moved from pilot projects into day-to-day operations.

Rather than replacing marketers, AI is functioning as a force multiplier—helping lean teams execute more sophisticated strategies without proportional increases in headcount.

Insight for Teams Planning 2026 Budgets

Altitude Marketing positions the report as a practical planning tool for marketing leaders navigating steady—but constrained—growth.

“Marketing leaders at CDMOs are being asked to do more with steady, not unlimited, growth,” said Adam Smartschan, chief strategy officer at Altitude Marketing. “This research gives teams a clear picture of what their peers are prioritizing, where budgets are moving, and which channels and tools are actually delivering results.”

Key findings from the report will be unpacked during a Contract Pharma webinar on January 29 at 11:00 a.m. ET, featuring Smartschan alongside John Boogard, Senior Director of Global Marketing and Product Strategies at ARx. The session will focus on translating benchmark data into actionable 2026 marketing plans.

The Bigger Picture

The CDMO marketing playbook is evolving quickly. Growth is back on the table—but it’s being fueled by SEO, AI-powered efficiency, and flexible operating models, not bloated teams or legacy spend.

For CDMOs competing in an increasingly crowded and global market, the message is clear: smarter marketing, not louder marketing, will define 2026.

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RingCentral is doubling down on its AI-first vision for contact centers—and analysts are taking notice. The cloud communications giant has been named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Enabled Contact Center Workforce Engagement Management 2025–2026, a recognition that underscores how seriously the market is taking AI’s role beyond chatbots and agent assist tools.

At the center of this recognition is RingWEM, RingCentral’s workforce engagement management suite, which is built natively into its AI-powered contact center platform, RingCX. Unlike many workforce tools that still rely on bolt-on integrations, RingWEM is designed as a core layer of the platform, handling forecasting, scheduling, quality management, and performance analytics in one cloud-native system.

Why IDC’s Call Matters

IDC’s MarketScape doesn’t just look at feature checklists. Its evaluations focus on how well vendors help organizations solve real operational problems—especially at scale. According to IDC Research Director Lou Reinemann, RingCentral stands out for enterprises with global footprints, hybrid workforces, and geographically distributed teams.

That’s a key point. Workforce engagement management has become significantly more complex as contact centers move away from centralized, on-premise models. Predicting demand across regions, managing agent performance remotely, and maintaining service levels while controlling labor costs are now table stakes. IDC’s assessment suggests RingCentral is meeting those demands with an architecture designed for modern, distributed operations—not legacy call center assumptions.

AI Moves From the Agent Desktop to the Ops Room

Much of the recent hype around AI in contact centers has focused on agent-facing tools: real-time prompts, automated summaries, and sentiment analysis. RingCentral’s strategy goes further upstream.

RingWEM applies AI to operational planning itself, using continuous forecasting models that adapt to changing demand patterns without heavy manual intervention. Instead of supervisors relying on static schedules and historical averages, the system dynamically adjusts staffing needs based on real-time and predictive inputs.

This shift has practical implications:

• Forecasting becomes adaptive, not periodic

• Scheduling reflects actual demand, not best guesses

• Quality management scales automatically, using AI-driven monitoring rather than random sampling

• Supervisors focus more on coaching, less on spreadsheets

In short, AI becomes part of how contact centers are run, not just how agents are assisted.

Native Integration as a Competitive Advantage

One of RingCentral’s most notable differentiators is that RingWEM is natively embedded within RingCX, rather than stitched together from multiple third-party tools. This matters more than it sounds.

Many enterprises today operate with fragmented contact center stacks—one vendor for routing, another for workforce management, another for quality assurance, and yet another for analytics. Each handoff introduces latency, data gaps, and administrative overhead.

By unifying forecasting, scheduling, screen recording, performance analytics, and quality management in a single platform, RingCentral is positioning RingCX as a system of record for both agent experience and customer experience. For large organizations, that can translate into faster decision-making, lower operational complexity, and more consistent service delivery across regions.

Labor Costs, Meet Automation

Labor remains the largest cost center for most contact operations. RingCentral’s pitch—and IDC’s validation—hinges on using AI to make workforce decisions more precise and less reactive.

AI-driven automation helps organizations:

• Reduce overstaffing during low-demand periods

• Prevent understaffing that hurts customer satisfaction

• Maintain consistent service levels without inflating headcount

• Align agent experience with performance outcomes

This approach reflects a broader industry trend: AI is increasingly being used to optimize economics, not just interactions. Vendors that can tie AI investments directly to cost control and productivity gains are gaining favor with enterprise buyers.

Executive Perspective: Practical AI, Not Flashy AI

RingCentral executives are framing this recognition as validation of a pragmatic approach to AI. According to Jim Dvorkin, SVP of Customer Experience Products, the company’s goal isn’t to showcase AI for its own sake, but to deliver “practical intelligence” that improves conversations and operational resilience.

That emphasis aligns with where many enterprise buyers are today. After years of experimentation, organizations are now asking harder questions: Does this AI reduce effort? Does it improve outcomes? Does it scale without adding complexity?

IDC’s Leader designation suggests RingCentral is answering “yes” often enough to stand out in a crowded market.

Market Context: Workforce Engagement Is Having a Moment

The timing of this recognition is telling. Workforce engagement management is emerging as one of the fastest-evolving segments of the contact center market, fueled by:

• Hybrid and remote work becoming permanent

• Rising customer expectations for speed and consistency

• Pressure to do more with leaner teams

• Maturation of AI models capable of real-time and predictive analysis

Vendors that treat WEM as a secondary add-on are increasingly at risk of falling behind. RingCentral’s decision to make RingWEM a core pillar of RingCX positions it well against rivals that still rely on fragmented ecosystems.

The Bigger Picture

Being named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape doesn’t guarantee market dominance—but it does signal credibility. For enterprises evaluating long-term contact center platforms, especially those with global operations, RingCentral’s AI-driven, integrated approach to workforce engagement is likely to resonate.

More broadly, this recognition highlights a shift in how the industry defines “AI-powered contact centers.” It’s no longer just about smarter agents. It’s about smarter planning, smarter staffing, and smarter use of human talent at scale.

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As U.S. privacy enforcement sharpens, consent banners alone are no longer enough—and regulators are making that clear. Ketch, the AI-powered privacy management company, has announced the general availability of Ketch Opt-Out Sync, a new capability designed to finally close one of the most persistent gaps in enterprise privacy operations: fragmented opt-out enforcement.

Opt-Out Sync extends Ketch’s Identity Sync framework, giving organizations a way to honor “Do Not Sell or Share” requests consistently across browsers, devices, and backend systems—without forcing consumers through repetitive forms or identity verification hoops.

Regulators Are Raising the Bar

Recent settlements involving companies such as Honda, Healthline Media, and Jam City have sent a strong signal from U.S. regulators: opt-out experiences must be frictionless, transparent, and comprehensive. Partial compliance—where some systems honor opt-outs while others quietly continue data sharing—is increasingly viewed as unacceptable.

Yet that partial enforcement remains common. Many organizations still rely on disconnected mechanisms that don’t talk to each other. A user may opt out via a consent banner, stopping browser-based tracking, while their data continues to circulate in CRM or email systems. In other cases, a webform opt-out flags backend records tied to an email address, but cookies, pixels, and ad trackers keep firing.

The result is growing compliance risk—and a failure to fully respect consumer intent.

From Front-End Signals to Back-End Enforcement

Ketch Opt-Out Sync is designed to eliminate these blind spots by connecting consent banners, DSR webforms, and backend systems into a single automated workflow. Built on Identity Sync, the system recognizes users across logged-in and logged-out states and applies opt-out choices everywhere data flows.

Crucially, this happens without requiring consumers to repeatedly identify themselves or submit multiple requests. One action is meant to govern all downstream use of their data.

What’s New Under the Hood

Ketch positions Opt-Out Sync as a shift from surface-level compliance to operational enforcement. Key capabilities include:

• Single-action opt-out enforcement, honoring “Do Not Sell or Share” requests without identity verification or repeat submissions

• Adaptive opt-out experiences, where forms dynamically adjust based on what the system already knows, minimizing unnecessary data collection

• Unified workflows for known and unknown users, eliminating parallel opt-out processes

• Automatically linked consent signals, ensuring banner choices and webform submissions stay in sync

• End-to-end, audit-ready enforcement, propagating opt-outs across CRM, CDPs, ad platforms, DSPs, and partners—with identity-based logs showing exactly how and where enforcement occurred

This approach reflects a broader industry realization: compliance isn’t just about collecting consent signals—it’s about enforcing them everywhere, consistently.

Why This Matters Now

As state-level privacy laws proliferate across the U.S., enforcement is becoming more aggressive and more technical. Regulators are no longer satisfied with symbolic compliance measures. They’re looking for proof that opt-outs actually stop data sharing across the full marketing and advertising ecosystem.

For brands, that means privacy tooling must integrate deeply with identity resolution, advertising infrastructure, and customer data platforms. Manual processes and siloed tools don’t scale—and they don’t stand up well in audits.

A Shift in Privacy Infrastructure

According to Max Anderson, Co-Founder of Ketch, the industry has focused too long on adding more banners and forms while leaving enforcement fragmented behind the scenes. Opt-Out Sync, he argues, flips that model by tying identity, consent, and enforcement together so a single opt-out actually governs how data is used everywhere it exists.

That framing aligns with a larger MarTech trend: privacy is becoming infrastructure, not just interface. Tools that can automate enforcement across increasingly complex data flows are quickly becoming essential—not optional.

For organizations under pressure to demonstrate real compliance, Ketch’s Opt-Out Sync positions itself as a practical answer to a problem regulators are no longer willing to overlook.

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