EMEA’s Tech Evolution - 7 Key Themes Transforming Business in 2025
The technology landscape across Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) is changing rapidly in 2025, with innovations actively reshaping industries and creating new business opportunities.
The Emerging Tech Radar: Current Market Drivers
The EMEA region’s technology environment encompasses a diverse range of emerging technologies at various maturity stages. Organizations demonstrate different levels of readiness and capability in adopting these technologies. Across EMEA, IDC observes technology gaps between industries and individual countries, highlighting variations in economic, financial and R&D power, and maturity.
These variations exist because countries and industries across EMEA differ in economic strength, investment levels, regulatory environments, and access to skilled talent, all of which impact their ability to adopt and develop new technologies. And as these technologies evolve, new trends are emerging.
Critical Topics Shaping EMEA’s Tech Conversation in 2025
1. Quantum Computing’s Regional Applications
The state of quantum computing in EMEA reveals how this technology is moving from theoretical to practical applications across various sectors. Quantum computing in the region is rapidly advancing from theory to real-world use, with pilot quantum computers now integrated into supercomputing centers to tackle complex challenges in fields like drug design, supply chain management, and financial modeling.
2. Tech Maturity Assessment
Organizations are evaluating adoption versus maturity, making critical assessments of emerging technologies and market readiness to guide implementation decisions. Structured maturity models and cross-functional assessments are essential to benchmark their current capabilities, identify gaps, and align technology adoption with business objectives and market readiness.
3. Change Forecast: 2025–2030
The projected disruptions from emerging technologies over the next five years will reshape how businesses operate and compete in the EMEA region. From AI integration into virtual worlds, to European quantum computing centers, space initiatives, and next-generation batteries, the next five years are crucial for the region’s global competitiveness.
4. GenAI as a Technology Catalyst
GenAI is accelerating the development and adoption of other emerging technologies, creating and opening exciting new pathways to innovation for organizations. Its ability to rapidly generate code, simulate complex scenarios, and automate content creation is streamlining R&D processes and enabling faster prototyping across industries.
5. Digital Natives Drive Innovation
Digital-first businesses, with their deep integration of technology and agile operating models, are often at the forefront of implementing emerging technologies and developing innovative use cases that set industry standards. Their ability to rapidly experiment, scale solutions, and leverage data-driven insights enables them to act as key partners and leaders in digital transformation initiatives across sectors.
6. Investment Patterns Reveal Priorities
Current investment plans for 2025 and beyond highlight that emerging technologies are attracting capital and organizational focus across EMEA. Investments are supported by significant public and private funding initiatives, such as venture capital for deep tech and government-backed projects in clean energy, digital infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing, all aimed at boosting competitiveness and technological leadership across sectors.
7. Beyond AI: Work Transformation by 2030
Five specific emerging technologies beyond AI are positioned to reshape how work happens by the end of the decade, enabling new forms of collaboration, automation, and real-time data exchange. The focus will be on streamlining secure transactions and digital identity management, creating immersive training and remote work environments, automating logistics and manufacturing, and supporting seamless connectivity for smart workplaces and IoT-driven operations.
Driving Adoption Through Measurable Results
Organizations across EMEA are adopting these technologies for specific business outcomes. Successful implementations connect directly to KPI improvements, with clear links between technology adoption and business performance metrics. Adoption barriers include challenges that limit EMEA organizations’ ability to implement emerging technologies effectively.
Technology Integration Benefits
Companies that combine multiple emerging technologies report stronger results than those implementing isolated solutions. The combination approach generates meaningful synergies across business processes.
The technical foundation is crucial. Organizations need the right technology backbone to exploit emerging technologies and generate maximum value.
What This Means for Your Business
These emerging technological trends and their practical applications will influence your organization’s market position in 2025 and beyond. Understanding the key applications and use cases driving technology demand can help position your organization to capitalize on these developments as they mature.
The question isn’t whether these technologies will transform business — it’s how prepared your organization is to adapt to them.
Did You Know?
IDC analysts are continuously monitoring and identifying emerging technologies through our Continuous Information Services. This resource empowers organizations to make informed decisions by providing comprehensive analyses, forecasts, and strategic guidance at the global, regional, and country levels.
To learn more about how our experts can assist you, feel free to reach out!
Rethinking CRM and Embracing Agentic AI: Towards a New Era of Customer Experience
Rethinking CRM and Embracing Agentic AI: Towards a New Era of Customer Experience
According to IDC research, 77% of consumers currently prefer to buy products and services through a mix of digital channels, and customer expectations relating to personalization, immediacy and cross-channel consistency are only becoming more demanding. Customer journeys are not linear, and consumer engagement is expected to become increasingly contextual, not just at the initial stages of the journey but also in terms of customer support — from sales and marketing to customer service. To meet these demands, organizations are reimagining traditional customer relationship management (CRM) systems, which involves actively implementing AI in multiple ways. As part of this, exploration of agentic AI is ramping up.
The Evolution of CRM: from Systems of Record to Systems of Action
Customer relationship management has evolved beyond merely storing contact details and tracking interactions. CRM platforms need to be designed or re-designed following a omnichannel and cross-functional approach to customer data collection, enabling profile reconciliation through data integration from various sources such as online purchases, in-store transactions, social media interactions, and customer service incidents. This integration should ensure a comprehensive and unified view of customer data, allowing organizations to gain valuable insights and provide personalized experiences. By consistently providing personalized and meaningful interactions, companies can foster loyalty, resulting in increased customer retention and positive word-of-mouth referrals. Modern CRM systems must be dynamic, real-time, and deeply integrated across the entire customer journey, encompassing marketing, sales, service, and support. Key shifts in CRM thinking include:
- Real-Time, Contextualized Data: Modern CRM platforms need to reflect customer data in real time, providing contextual and intent-driven insights that empower every function within the organization.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Effective CRM now requires multiple departments to work together, breaking down data silos to ensure a comprehensive view of the customer.
- Automation and AI Integration: AI-enhanced automation is foundational, enhancing customer service, streamlining operations, and ensuring consistency across channels.
IDC Insight: Organizations are rethinking CRM through collaborative, AI-enhanced approaches that connect data across functions and eliminate silos.
Agentic AI: Bringing Intelligence to Unstructured Work
Organizations are already gaining experience in leveraging AI in multiple ways to serve customers — from proposing next-best actions to making sense of documents and knowledge articles, analyzing customer sentiment and more. Agentic AI represents a new frontier here, and pulls AI capabilities towards task and workflow automation. Unlike traditional rule-based systems, where workflows and processes are designed statically up-front, the emergence of AI agents is starting to show how organizations can bring more nuanced automation capabilities to less structured, unpredictable environments. AI agents are therefore conceptually a great fit for complex service scenarios that can come into play at critical moments in the customer journey. At IDC, we see three waves of AI agents playing out:
- Knowledge Agents: Enhance decision-making by integrating relevant information into workflows
- Action Agents: Execute tasks (including taking actions in external systems) and assist in decision-making processes
- Orchestration Agents: Coordinate entire workflows, based on goals and insights into patterns of past behavior and positive outcomes
IDC Research: 41% of organizations say they are already investing in AI agents, recognizing their value in case management and service operations where flexibility and responsiveness are critical.
The Role of Platforms in Enabling AI and CRM Synergy
CRM systems are increasingly pivotal in the integration of customer data and AI across organizational value chains, serving as a foundational element for collaboration between IT and business units. Agentic AI, in this context, acts as a transformative accelerator, converting insights into actionable strategies and enhancing decision-making processes at scale. Organizations wanting to implement AI quickly, safely, and securely into CRM practices and capabilities will benefit from platforms that provide:
- Managed Access to Enterprise Data: Secure, broad access to corporate knowledge, documents, and data is essential for AI systems to function effectively.
- Integrated Automation Tools: A unified platform combining AI with existing automation capabilities reduces complexity and accelerates time to value.
- Scalability and Agility: Platforms can help organizations quickly adapt to changing market conditions and customer needs without extensive customization.
Trend: In the context of modern CRM strategies, AI is most effective when integrated into a platform that spans front-, middle-, and back-office functions, enabling seamless customer experiences and operational efficiency.
Measurable Impact: What Organizations Are Achieving
Organizations embracing AI and modern CRM strategies are witnessing significant results:
- Escalations reduced by approximately 90%
- Case resolution time decreased from 7 hours to 2 hours
- Customer satisfaction increased from 80% to 99%
- 17% reduction in staff needed to handle more cases
- 7% increase in billable utilization
These outcomes highlight the transformative potential of combining CRM modernization with AI and point towards an exciting future powered by agentic AI.
The Bottom Line
Organizations that rethink CRM as a real-time, AI-powered system of action — and embrace agentic AI to handle complex, unpredictable work — are better positioned to deliver exceptional customer experiences. This approach not only enhances satisfaction and loyalty but also drives operational efficiency and business agility.
Improving Business Resilience via Circularity - Tech Solutions are Needed
The current global tariff situation and resulting supply chain volatility and price increases send a clear signal: The era of seemingly limitless availability of materials and products is over. Companies that rely on global supply chains are increasingly having to deal with geopolitical uncertainty and price turbulence. Risk and resilience are becoming primary aspects to future proof the organization.
The challenge, however, also presents a significant opportunity: The transition to a circular economy offers a way forward. Circularity offers independence, innovative strength, and sustainability. In the current macroeconomic climate, the business case for circularity is increasingly attractive.
In Europe, circularity is additionally driven by the EU’s EcoDesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). It obliges companies to make products more sustainable, repairable, and resource-efficient — thus specifically promoting those who rethink and act at an early stage.
ESPR, which entered into force in July 2024, forms the cornerstone of the European Commission’s approach to more environmentally sustainable and circular products by improving their circularity, energy performance, recyclability, and durability.
It considerably extends the scope of application in comparison to Directive 2009/125/EC, shifting the focus from energy efficiency to broader sustainability across the entire product life cycle. It is intended to play a central role in developing a strong, well-functioning single market for sustainable products in the EU.
The EU’s EcoDesign Regulation
The ESPR enables the setting of performance and information rules — known as ecodesign requirements — for almost all categories of physical goods. It aims to:
- Improve product durability, reusability, upgradability, and reparability
- Enhance the possibility of product maintenance and refurbishment
- Make products more energy- and resource-efficient
- Address the presence of substances that inhibit circularity
- Increase recycled content
- Make products easier to remanufacture and recycle
- Set rules on carbon and environmental footprints
- Limit the generation of waste
- Improve the availability of information on product sustainability
For groups of products that share enough common characteristics, the framework allows horizontal rules to be set.
The ESPR also contains these new measures:
- Digital Product Passport: A digital identity card for products, components, and materials, it will store relevant information to support product sustainability, promote their circularity, and strengthen legal compliance.
- Destruction of Unsold Consumer Products: Introducing a ban on the destruction of unsold textiles and footwear opens the way for similar bans in other sectors if evidence shows they are needed. It will require large and, eventually, medium-sized companies across all product sectors to disclose annual information on unsold consumer products on their websites, such as the number and weight of products they discard and their reasons for doing so.
- Green Public Procurement: Public authorities in the EU spend around €1.8 trillion purchasing works, goods, and services. The ESPR will help steer these funds in a more sustainable direction by enabling mandatory Green Public Procurement rules to be set for specific products. Under those rules, public authorities that purchase the products concerned will be required to purchase products that meet the highest levels of performance in terms of sustainability and circularity. This has the potential to significantly boost demand for sustainable products and, in turn, further incentivise companies to invest in this area.
In the first work plan, adopted on April 16, 2025, the European Commission gives priority (over the next three years) to certain product groups, notably final products (textiles and apparel, tires, furniture, and mattresses) and intermediate products (iron, steel, and aluminium). ICT and energy-related products will continue to be addressed under existing directives or upcoming reviews.
Opportunity for Transformation
Compliance with the ESPR is a legal obligation but also an opportunity for companies to systematically rethink their products, processes, and business models. The required change is profound: It requires technical audits, data collection along the supply chain, document transparency, and external audits.
The entire business ecosystem will be involved in this transition. Internally, it will involve organizations’ technical departments, marketing, sales, procurement, and GRC. Externally, it will involve supply chain partners. Forward-thinking companies will be able to use the ESPR as a lever to strengthen their competitiveness, differentiate themselves in the market, and credibly meet the expectations of customers, investors, and regulators.
ESPR Applies Globally
The ESPR’s reach extends far beyond EU borders. Any company wishing to place a product on the European market must comply with the requirements of the regulation, regardless of where it is manufactured. For manufacturers from non-EU countries, this means they must fundamentally revise their product designs, their traceability systems, and their information transparency.
Looking to the future, the ESPR could become a reference standard at the international level, helping to redefine the rules of global trade and promote a circular and sustainable economy on a global scale.
Technology as an Enabler
IT for circularity describes how IT products and services can support the circular economy (e.g., by enabling efficient resource management or reducing waste). The use of advanced data management and analytics and the IoT enables organizations to track, trace, and optimize the life cycle of products, ensuring they are reused, refurbished, or recycled rather than discarded.
Many tech vendors are offering advisory, advanced technologies, and even AI-enabled solutions to support their customers in improving both their environmental impact and contribution to a more sustainable, circular economy as well as generating efficiencies, advancing supply chain resilience, and reducing risk. Increasingly, aspects around the latter are becoming key drivers for circularity initiatives.
IDC is launching a research project to examine the current status of tech vendors’ strategies, solution offerings, customer projects, and benefits achieved from supporting their customers’ initiatives towards circularity. If you’d like to know more or would like to participate, please get in touch.
Is AI Creating a Two-Tier Workforce?
AI is quickly changing the workplace, but not everyone is reaping the rewards. Office workers are seeing the perks of AI, while those on the front lines are lagging due to a lack of training and resources. This gap could lead to a two-tier workforce, where some people with AI skills excel while others find it tough.
Many frontline jobs involve a lot of manual and repetitive tasks. Automation and AI are great tools to help shift workers’ focus from boring tasks to more interesting ones. So, it’s no shock that found that 63% of frontline workers are using AI tools in their jobs. Unfortunately, just 18% of employees have access to AI from their companies, which has led 45% to seek out free or personal AI tools for their work. This creates serious security risks for companies.
While frontline workers generally view AI less favorably than office staff, nearly half believe it could enhance their work experience. Generational differences are notable though, with 55% of Gen Z frontline workers expressing excitement about AI, compared to just 27% of baby boomers.
Frontline workers frequently also feel more anxious about AI, mainly because they’re worried about job security, feeling powerless against new tech, and thinking that human input in decision-making is dwindling. IDC’s survey shows that just 48% of frontline workers think AI isn’t a threat to their jobs. On the flip side, 20% feel they are at serious risk, with the remainder unsure. Getting to know AI tools better can help ease these worries for frontline workers and turn skeptics into skilled AI users.
More than 2 billion frontline workers play a crucial role in keeping our planet running. Their jobs are tough and often risky, involving 10- to 12-hour shifts in different settings. AI is changing the game for these workers by automating tasks, offering real-time insights, and giving them more power. AI isn’t just for office work anymore; it’s now making waves in most industries, including those with large numbers of frontline workers.
To move forward, tech providers and tech buyers must rethink what expertise means in today’s AI era. They must help frontline workers understand how AI tools can enable them to handle complicated tasks even with little prior experience. Our research suggests that companies can — and ought to — expand their view on who can get involved in AI-driven initiatives. By doing so, they can leverage the complete potential of their workforce and make sure that everyone is part of the AI transformation, ultimately boosting the return on investment for current and future AI projects.
Listen to Meike on the latest webcast, “Important Workplace Insights to Drive AI Sales in Europe”