The Enterprise AI Deal Has Changed. Here’s What Vendors Need to Prove.
IDC ·
AI spending is arriving before the business case. In IDC’s 2026 Worldwide AI Economics and Cost of Ownership Survey, 69% of organizations said there is a significant gap between AI spending and measurable financial outcomes. Only 15% had realized an AI ROI above 100% to date. That gap is why enterprise AI deals now turn […] The post The Enterprise AI Deal Has Changed. Here’s What Vendors Need to Prove. appeared first on IDC .
AI spending is arriving before the business case. In IDC’s 2026 Worldwide AI Economics and Cost of Ownership Survey, 69% of organizations said there is a significant gap between AI spending and measurable financial outcomes. Only 15% had realized an AI ROI above 100% to date.
That gap is why enterprise AI deals now turn on three proofs: value that holds up with finance, trust on governance and security, and support that reaches beyond IT. Underneath sits a fourth gap, culture and operating model, because agentic AI changes how work gets done and buyers haven’t caught up. IDC’s analysts say vendors who leave any of the four open will see their deals slow down.
At IDC’s October 7 webinar, The AI Execution Gap: A Playbook for Selling AI to the Enterprise , Laurie Buczek, GVP of Market and Business Intelligence, and Tony Olvet, GVP of Worldwide C-Suite and Buyer Insights Research, laid out what vendors now have to prove.
The gap underneath the other three shows up in the adoption numbers: IDC research found that 80% of organizations have started deploying agentic AI, yet only 17% use it enterprise-wide . Business teams find it hard to picture a way of working that doesn’t exist yet, and many business leaders can’t tell their IT counterparts how agentic AI will change their function. Buczek said IDC’s surveys and conversations show CEOs seeing agentic AI as a way to transform their business models. For vendors, that means a pitch about the tool lands on a buyer who is still working out the redesign. Olvet’s closing advice was to lead with business transformation.
That redesign has a price tag, and cost has moved from a worry to a risk. In an IDC survey from May 2026, 73% of respondents named excessive AI cost a significant risk. Nearly half of organizations can’t prove out AI value, in part because they’re applying digital transformation-era frameworks to agentic AI, which keeps learning and changing. Baselines are hard to set when the operating model itself is being reinvented.
The vendors who get through anchor the pitch in outcomes the customer can measure. Olvet’s test: can your customer report the result on an earnings call? Some large banks already point to net new revenue and product launches that came out of their AI investments. IDC expects infrastructure build-out to catch up with demand around 2029, which should bring costs down. Until then, the guidance is to articulate long-term value.
Go back to the 17% figure. The webinar’s explanation starts with governance: agentic AI is hard to govern, and trust takes time to build. Governance and security also topped the webinar’s opening poll on the gap that slows AI deals the most. Security is often the number one roadblock to implementation and to realizing value, so raise it before the buyer does and make the reduced risk easy to document in the buyer’s own governance platform.
IDC analysts built a five-pillar model for agentic AI governance. It covers areas such as explainability and auditability, and identity and access, including non-human identities. The full set is in the webinar replay. In a special IDC study, 96% of early agentic adopters governed it centrally.
Governance and finance reviews bring more people into the deal. IDC’s September 2026 C-Suite Tech Survey asked who is involved in AI funding decisions. The CIO or CTO still leads at 63%, but C-level business function leaders follow at 62% and CFOs at 61%. In most organizations, business leaders now lead or share agentic AI investment decisions. A chief AI officer is joining the room too: in an IDC CEO survey, 42% of CEOs said they plan to hire one in the next 12 months.
Sellers should build contacts across IT, the business and finance, and use their champion and sponsor to open doors. IDC’s AI buying committee field guide, covering who else is in the room, what each role needs and how to multi-thread a deal, is coming soon.
Buyers have grown wary of AI theatre. Their top frustrations with the AI vendor community, from IDC’s C-Suite Tech Survey, are limited integration with existing systems, lack of model and data transparency, and vendor lock-in concerns (each at 34%), followed by overpromising and underdelivering and unclear pricing models (each at 31%).
Against that backdrop, sell how your product changes the way a team works, and bring a business case a CFO can defend, built on outcomes the customer can measure. Put governance and security on the table early, with a way to document the reduced risk. Plan the deal around a committee that spans IT, the business and finance.
If these four gaps sound familiar, start with the one that slows your own deals the most. The AI Execution Gap Benchmark lets you grade your go-to-market readiness against all four, using what enterprise buyers are asking right now.
Get the Benchmark | Watch the webinar replay
And if you want independent proof behind your AI story, explore IDC Multiplier .
The post The Enterprise AI Deal Has Changed. Here’s What Vendors Need to Prove. appeared first on IDC .