There is a structural misalignment growing inside many vendor organisations. It may not be visible in the quarterly numbers yet. But the enterprises buying from you are starting to feel it before you do.
Most product teams are doing what they were built to do. They are focusing on roadmap, differentiation, competitive response, and now AI features. The question inside many product functions is still the same: how do we put AI into what we already build? ‘
That is increasingly the wrong question.
The most sophisticated enterprises are no longer just asking what AI can do for their existing systems. They are asking whether the system itself is still the right one. AI does not simply upgrade the operating environment. It changes it. It changes how decisions are made, how work is organised, and how value is created.
That changes the buyer.
This is no longer just a technology decision. It is a board question, a CFO question, and an operating model question. The buyer is moving up and across the organisation toward whoever owns the architecture of how the enterprise actually runs.
That creates a growing gap inside the vendor.
Sales is standing between a product positioned as a tool and a buyer asking system-level questions. Marketing is messaging into a conversation that has already moved. Product is still building for a technology buyer whose primacy is beginning to erode.
This is not a criticism. It is a structural observation.
Many vendor organisations were designed for a world in which AI was an emerging technology to be adopted. That world asked whether to buy AI and where to deploy it. The leading edge of the market is now asking something else: what does AI change about the system of the enterprise itself?
Bloor Research’s position is direct. AI changes the system in which work happens, not just the work inside it. For vendors, the implication is clear. If your product architecture, category positioning, and go to market motion were designed for the old question, the distance between what you are selling and what the enterprise is now asking will widen.
The vendors who close that gap first will not do it by adding more AI features. They will do it by recognising that the buyer has moved, the conversation has changed, and the old market frame is
no longer enough.
That is the conversation Bloor Research is now having with strategic partners this quarter. If your organisation is starting to feel that gap, now is the time to talk.
By
Donna Lamden,
Head of Partnerships
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