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As we press forward into Q1, we sat down with some of Pigment’s leadership team to make some predictions about what this year might hold for business leaders. Here's what they had to say...
Eléonore Crespo, co-CEO
It feels like a safe assumption to predict that the proliferation of AI is going to continue. But I think you’re also going to see a more obvious gap emerging between those who can leverage it well, and those who struggle. Business leaders have a lot to think about - training workforces how to interact with AI; issues of bias and privacy; addressing novel security and governance threats - and more. It’s our responsibility to ensure our employees and our customers can all enjoy the benefits AI promises.
Second, it appears that the current period of geopolitical instability is likely to persist. With that in mind, I think we’re going to see a real effort from companies to become more resilient - the way you respond to disruption is going to become a real competitive differentiator.
Finally, I’m going to make a very unspecific prediction: something big is going to surprise us all. I’m cheating here, but I think it’s a safe prediction given recent history. Businesses nowadays really do have to prepare for anything - whether that’s natural disasters, new regulations, rapidly changing consumer demands, or something else entirely.
Jay Peir, Head of Strategy
For me, the prediction that springs to mind immediately is that we’re going to see increasing adoption of AI among enterprises in an effort to achieve capability diffusion. Essentially it’s a model that allows business users to self-serve far more often than they can right now, freeing up valuable analyst time to focus on more value-added tasks.
Second, a trend I’m seeing is that a lot of companies are looking to consolidate their tooling. With budgets tight, reducing tool sprawl is an obvious opportunity for cost savings. Beyond the financial benefits, integrated platform solutions offer greater efficiency compared to point solutions, enabling smoother cross departmental collaboration, data sharing, and improved workflows.
Rebe Tristan, Head of Customer Experience
One trend I believe will become increasingly pervasive is the emphasis on improving employee experience as a key driver of enhanced customer experience.
Understandably, a lot of people have been focused on putting generative AI and LLMs in the hands of customers, and of course there’s a lot of value to be found in doing so. But I think the potential for internal teams is equally, if not more, transformative. For example, leveraging these technologies to feed relevant insights to support agents to enrich customer interactions, or using sentiment analysis and data insights to provide a deeper understanding of customer engagement across their journey.
Personally, I am excited to build on this vision at Pigment to deliver an exceptional customer experience.
Sean Brophy, Head of Sales
I think we’re going to see a real focus on territory and quota planning in particular: it was listed in our research this year as the top area for improvement in sales planning.
We’re actually in the middle of our own T&Q planning process - the framework we’ve been using looks like this:
- First our sales and revenue ops teams used Pigment to design equitable territories (which we refer to as books of business, or BoBs) and create quotas that align with the potential TAM of the territory: blending account firmographic data, intent to buy, and propensity to buy data. With Pigment, the process took a few weeks to complete (not months) and is flexible enough to make additional changes before we launch to the field.
- Right now sales leaders are taking a closer look at the plans and applying their own updates through a qualitative and more nuanced lens. Sales leaders know their team and nuances of their territories which may not be represented in the data. This process, also completed in Pigment, allows for sales leaders and rev ops to have collaborative discussions - they can create scenarios in real time to look at potential impacts of changes.
- In the future we’ll keep an eye on positive and negative trends and adjust the business accordingly. This could mean updates to territories or assigning additional resources or investments to support the sellers and the business - Pigment’s flexibility is really what enables us to do this.
Next, AI is going to start accelerating the process of performance management for sales leaders - for example, leaders will be able to quickly see how their teams are performing against forecasts. This process is going to help sales leaders manage their teams - they’ll be able to easily see which teams are performing, and need help.
Albane Bressolle-Chataigner, Head of People
Economic uncertainty has meant a shift toward cost control over ‘growth at all costs’, which companies are still adapting to. We're seeing a lot of companies forced to reduce hiring, and in some cases unfortunately make redundancies. All of this means that workforce planning is becoming more crucial than ever before: plans will need to be comprehensive and flexible, and business leaders must understand how to map, assess and adjust their existing and future workforce accordingly. The ability of leaders to iterate quickly on their workforce plan and structure will differentiate them from those who are late to adapt, and may suffer for it.
Companies and leaders really have to assess the way they’re managing their talent. Most of the time, companies are either looking at being a talent magnet or a talent factory. I think that this is two sides of the same coin and successful leaders will have to identify the right balance of employer brand building to attract talent vs upskilling existing employees. And this is even more true for companies that were previously more focused on the attraction part - they will have to lean a lot into developing their internal talent pool.
Finally, pay transparency. There has been a big push for pay transparency across Europe and North America, and a new directive from the E.U. council will require companies to offer greater transparency to both employees and jobseekers. It’s intended to drive more fairness and to ultimately close the gender gap. Companies need to rethink their internal pay practices, and produce yearly reporting requirements. In my opinion, this will be a big differentiator in attracting top-notch talent, as prospective employees will have access to much more information.
Romain Niccoli, co-CEO
I expect we’re going to continue to see rapid progress in the field of AI - one area I’m particularly invested in is agentic AI. By themselves, AI agents are technically nothing new, having existed in some form since the 1950s. But rapid development in the field of large language models (LLMs) has made AI agents orders of magnitude more effective.
An AI agent is capable of autonomously carrying out tasks on behalf of a user. When asked a question, the agent creates a step-by-step plan to achieve a result, which can involve the use of an array of tools to help it get there. For instance, if an agent is asked a question that requires retrieving external information, it can intelligently choose to use an API to gather the needed data. If the agent needs to perform computations, generate a report, or access internal databases, it can decide to invoke relevant software tools or functions.
It’s an exciting time to work in AI, but as with any novel piece of tech, caution is necessary. Human-in-the-loop should be standard practice for any agentic system, to ensure that outcomes are desirable, but also that you’re getting the most out of your people. Just like AI, the human mind has very unique capabilities - and when the two are able to complement each other neatly, you get amazing results.
Next steps
Whatever 2025 holds, prepare for it using Pigment. Book a demo today.
