Benchmarking Services

The market loves flashy HR tech, but much of the real value sits behind the interface.

That is easy to forget in a market shaped by polished demos, hot buzzwords and high-visibility features designed to win attention quickly. Copilots, assistants, dashboards and sleek user experiences tend to dominate the conversation. They are easy to see, easy to explain and easy to remember. But some of the most important technology in the HR stack is the part most users never notice at all.

The insurance services market in North America is operating under a different set of structural pressures than many other regions, with the life and retirement (L&R) segment exerting much influence on sourcing behavior. Insurers are managing long-term obligations amid persistent margin pressure, high regulatory scrutiny and limited tolerance for operational disruption. Unlike shortcycle property and casualty (P&C) portfolios, L&R books mandate long-term servicing commitments from carriers, spanning decades, making stability, accuracy and continuity nonnegotiable operational requirements rather than just optimization. These conditions are reshaping the way enterprises assess providers in North America.

This ISG Provider Lens® Specialty Analytics & AI Services – Supply Chain 2026 study assesses providers enabling analytics- and AI‑driven supply chain transformation across planning, orchestration and execution. These providers help improve visibility, strengthen risk management, enhance forecasting accuracy and accelerate informed decision-making across planning, sourcing, manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, inventory, transportation and procurement. The report focuses on providers’ ability to enable AI-powered decision engines, real-time insights and proactive exception management that help enterprises build resilient, responsive and adaptive supply chains. It examines how providers support the evolution from traditional process execution toward intelligent orchestration, autonomous decision-making and outcome-driven supply chain operations.

I recently wrote about the increasing popularity and range of adoption choices for the PostgreSQL database. Having done so, it is also worth taking the time to assess the health of another significant open-source database: MySQL. As with PostgreSQL, potential adopters of MySQL have a variety of different options available, thanks to a broad ecosystem of service, support and software providers. Unlike PostgreSQL, which is developed by an open community, MySQL is owned and developed by a single provider. This has been a source of tension for the MySQL provider and user ecosystem throughout the project’s history. While MySQL-related products have prospered at Oracle since it became the project’s owner in 2010, tension resurfaced this year amid calls from some members of the MySQL community for Oracle to consider handing the MySQL project over to a provider-neutral, non-profit foundation. Given this discussion, it’s timely to evaluate the past, present and potential future of MySQL.

B2B buying has moved into a more fragmented operating model: more stakeholders, more digital research, more internal consensus-building and fewer moments where the seller actually controls the conversation. The implication for CROs is clear: Revenue teams need better technology to manage what happens between meetings, not just what happens inside the CRM. The complication is that many sales organizations still rely on email threads, static decks, scattered links and seller memory to move complex deals forward. So, the question becomes: What technology helps sellers guide a buying group without forcing the buyer back into a seller-led process? The answer is the digital sales room, a shared deal space that gives buyers and sellers one place to collaborate, track progress, surface intent and move from interest to decision.