The Hackett Group^® research examines how procurement, finance and human capital management solution providers are evolving AI from productivity tools to embedded execution capabilities

The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HCKT), an ROI-led AI transformation firm, today released new research examining how artificial intelligence (AI) is being developed, positioned and deployed by enterprise solution providers in the procurement, finance and human capital management (HCM) marketplace. The findings show that AI is now widely embedded across solutions in these domains, but that most offerings today remain focused on assistive and workflow-level automation rather than fully autonomous execution.

The AI Solution Providers 2026 Trends, Capabilities and Strategic Insights report finds that providers in these areas are increasingly reframing AI from a collection of features into an execution layer embedded within enterprise applications. The strategic objective is no longer simply improving individual productivity but enabling AI to participate directly in coordinating, executing, and optimizing end-to-end work across business processes.

"Providers are moving beyond stand-alone AI features toward architectures designed to orchestrate work across processes, systems and roles," said Meena Ibrahim, research analyst at The Hackett Group^®. "While most solutions today still focus on task automation and decision support, the long-term opportunity is enabling AI to participate directly in end-to-end business execution."

The market transition to AI in these domains remains incremental – shaped by customer readiness and existing solution architectures

The research shows that this shift is taking place within the context of existing enterprise architectures. Most providers continue to extend established SaaS applications with embedded AI capabilities, with 64% aligning to this model, while fully agentic, AI-native solutions represent a much smaller share of the market (36%).

At the same time, agent-based AI alternatives are now a visible part of the enterprise landscape – with 74% of providers reporting production deployment of basic AI agents such as copilots or conversational assistants. However, more advanced capabilities – such as configurable agents and multi-agent orchestration – are far less common and often remain in pilot or development stages.

This reflects a broader structural limitation. Most AI capabilities remain confined to specific workflows or applications, while enterprise processes span multiple systems and decision points – and current solutions do not yet consistently enable coordinated execution across these environments.

As a result, the practical value of AI today depends less on the presence of discrete features and more on how effectively those capabilities are integrated into end-to-end enterprise workflows, data and decision-making.

Scaling AI requires more than technology

The research also highlights a growing gap between technical capability and enterprise readiness. Providers demonstrate strong capabilities in technology infrastructure, automation frameworks and orchestration layers, but show greater variability in governance, workforce enablement and strategic alignment. This imbalance suggests that while AI technology is advancing rapidly, many organizations may struggle to scale it effectively without addressing foundational governance and operational challenges (e.g., skills, data quality, process knowledge).

Enterprise AI solutions are most commonly built on interconnected ecosystems rather than stand-alone platforms. Eighty-six percent of providers rely on embedded application programming interfaces (APIs) to third-party AI models, with common partnerships across leading cloud and AI providers. This ecosystem-driven model highlights the growing importance of platform integration, data architecture and orchestration in delivering scalable AI capabilities.

Taken together, these findings highlight a critical inflection point in how enterprise AI delivers value in these domains and likely others. For practitioners, the research makes clear that adopting AI features alone is unlikely to deliver meaningful performance improvement. Instead, organizations must rethink how work is structured and executed, focusing on how AI can assist, augment or execute tasks within redesigned end-to-end processes.

For solution providers, the next phase of differentiation will depend on moving beyond isolated feature-level capabilities to enable coordinated execution across enterprise processes. While current AI capabilities are often embedded within specific applications or workflows, enterprise value will increasingly depend on the ability to orchestrate AI across systems of record, data environments and decision points – supporting end-to-end process execution rather than incremental task automation. This points toward a next generation of AI-enabled architectures and emerging standards that sit above existing systems and enable more seamless coordination, integration and execution across enterprise environments.

Access the full report

The full report provides a detailed analysis of AI capabilities, use cases and market trends across source-to-pay, finance, and human capital management. It provides practical guidance for both enterprise practitioners evaluating solutions and providers aligning AI capabilities with business outcomes. Download a complimentary summary of key insights from the research. Contact us to inquire about licensing the full report.

About The Hackett Group^®

The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HCKT) is an ROI-led, AI enterprise transformation firm that helps clients enable AI world-class performance. Its experts and engineers leverage proprietary AI delivery platforms – Hackett AI XPLR™, ZBrain™, XT™, AIXelerator™ and AskHackett™ – to accelerate and enhance the delivery of the company’s solutions and services.

The AI platforms are powered by the company’s domain-specific Hackett Solution Language Model informed by Hackett Process and Performance Intelligence – including Digital World Class^® benchmark metrics, best-practice process flows and service delivery model solution frameworks, which accelerate and enhance the delivery of its services. The Hackett Group’s proprietary insights are based on benchmarking results from leading global organizations, including 98% of Dow Jones Global Titans, 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials and 90% of the Fortune 100. Visit www.thehackettgroup.com

Trademarks

The Hackett Group^®, quadrant logo, and Digital World Class^® are the registered marks of The Hackett Group^®.

Cautionary Statement Regarding "Forward-Looking" Statements

This release contains "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements including without limitation, words such as "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," or other similar phrases or variations of such words or similar expressions indicating, present or future anticipated or expected occurrences or outcomes are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not statements of historical fact and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that may impact such forward-looking statements include without limitation, the ability of The Hackett Group^® to effectively market its digital transformation, our ability to transition our capabilities to support generative artificial intelligence (AI)-related consulting services and solutions and other consulting services, our ability to effectively integrate acquisitions into our operations, our ability to manage joint ventures and successfully cooperate with our joint venture partners, competition from other consulting and technology companies that may have or develop in the future, similar offerings, the commercial viability of The Hackett Group^® and its services as well as other risk detailed in The Hackett Group’s reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The Hackett Group^®does not undertake any duty to update this release or any forward-looking statements contained herein.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260714010396/en/

media@thehackettgroup.com