2026: The Year Transformation Grows Up

2025 has seen AI transform business workflows, accelerating the pace of task execution and opening new opportunities for teams’ capabilities regardless of IT knowledge. For example, ‘Vibe coding’, which refers to the art of making an app or website without having to manually write a line of code became so popular that Collins dictionary declared it the word of the year.

However, if 2025 has been the year in which businesses experimented with AI to transform their operations, 2026 will be the year business leaders recognise it’s not about what AI can do for them, but what it can do for their customers. Importantly, the process – and goals – of transformation are undergoing their own form of transformation, largely driven by AI’s influence.

Businesses are embracing transformation strategies as part of a wider business plan, realising that it’s not just about upgrading technology, but about designing a resilient, future-proofed business that delivers the best possible value to customers. Moreover, the value their human expertise brings speaks directly to customers through empathy, instinct, and relationships; underestimating the value of human connection in an AI era is a risk.

By 2026, employee use of unsanctioned AI tools – ‘shadow AI’ – will be the top cause of data breaches, forcing regulators to impose AI usage audits similar to GDPR. Many firms are rushing to deploy AI without internal guardrails or education, and the gap between policy and practice will only narrow after painful lessons.

In 2026, organisations will abandon the obsession with overnight transformation but will also have no patience with never-ending strategy stages of consultancies. Organisations are hungry to execute but can’t afford to cut corners given the scope of transformation projects once underway.

The pressure to get it right hasn’t dissipated, but neither has the urgency to evolve. The winners will be those who can mobilise high-impact change quickly but sustain it intelligently. Time itself is a cost, but reckless speed adds risk. Therefore, true agility built on expert planning and sector empathy becomes the benchmark of quality transformation.

Boardrooms are moving beyond proofs of concept to outcomes at scale, yet most organisations are still early on the maturity curve. Recent research shows nearly all companies are investing in AI, with 92% planning to increase spending within the next three years, and only 1% describing themselves as truly mature with AI embedded in workflows.

The opportunity is vast (with multi‑trillion pounds available in productivity potential), but leadership, operating model and governance remain the biggest growth factors in transformation, not tools. In other words, it is people, not technology, standing in the way of business growth.

As AI adoption accelerates, firms that can evidence AI governance, workforce training and ethical use will gain a valuation premium. AI readiness will therefore become a board-level KPI, measured alongside EBITDA, ESG and cyber risk. The sentiment at the Gartner Symposium was clear; AI is ready, yet human readiness is lagging and belief in its real value remains limited.

Success will depend on sector knowledge and empathy towards challenges faced. Consultants with lived experience, who can tailor frameworks to the realities of insurance, utilities, healthcare or retail will have a direct impact. Consequently, cookie-cutter approaches will decline as clients begin to demand bespoke roadmaps grounded in operational understanding. Niche and nimble will win.

Agent-to-Agent negotiations are already live. Walmart, for example and major banks are building transaction processes powered by agentic reasoning and decision-making. Think autonomous systems negotiating, optimising and transacting without human intervention, retail; think purchasing and supply chain.

AI-powered Sales Development representatives (SDR) agents are already making huge changes, with PayPal reporting a 300% increase in qualified meetings and Otter.ai reporting a 250% lift in outreach. With financial services leading investment in agentic systems, we can expect rapid adoption and scale.

‘AI won’t replace you, but someone who uses AI will’ is a phrase lauded confidently and frequently in the past year. However, what’s also true is that companies that embrace AI to help train new employees and better serve their customers will outpace those who don’t.

Human talent, expertise and experience cannot be replaced with AI, so it’s crucial we continue to nurture the next generation of talent. By 2026, AI-enhanced consultancies will dominate the mid-market, using data-driven insights to deliver faster, more precise recommendations. The “challenger consultancy” will emerge as the new model: agile firms blending human intuition with machine intelligence to outperform the Big 4.

Transformation should be customer-driven and empowered with AI, not AI-driven. When serving customers is the priority, businesses grow faster. Integrating AI into transformation increases the business’s resilience to changing technologies and ultimately supports a more profitable exit strategy.

Artificial intelligence will no longer be a lab experiment, but the engine of modern enterprise and organisations need help from agile AI centric challenger consultancy to drive out value.