Forrester’s Buyers’ Journey Survey, 2025 highlights purchase patterns for business applications. Here are some of our findings. You can find more details in our newly published report, The Business Applications Buyers’ Journey, 2026.

• Buyers purchase business applications to drive more efficient operations. We find that there are different purchase drivers between business and IT decision-makers. Both buyers prioritize increasing operational efficiency. Interestingly, our data uncovers that technology buyers purchase these applications to increase innovation or their competitive advantage more often than business buyers, who are more focused on increasing workforce productivity.
• IT and business leaders collaborate at every step when purchasing business applications. Business and IT stakeholders must be aligned at every step throughout the purchase process. Our data shows that IT and business executives, managers, and specialists are heavily involved in all stages of the purchase process, with IT executives leading all purchasing stages. This alignment carries forward through implementation, use, and expansion of the purchased business application. This is especially important to drive product adoption and long-term value realization.
• Buyers still make initial purchases and renewals via salespeople. Buyers use many external sources on their purchase journey, but they are most likely to purchase business apps directly from the sales rep employed by the vendor. Interestingly, 28% of buyers purchase their apps via an e-commerce site/marketplace, but this is after working with a sales representative.
• Buyers use genAI to unlock more options during the purchase process. Business applications are complex software solutions. Vendors offer a wealth of license options, software add-ons, accelerators, industry editions, and AI capabilities, which are often separately licensed. To help make sense of these complexities, buyers use genAI tools for their research. This approach yields positive results. For example, buyers are now considering a broader range of vendors and cite greater confidence in their decisions. The most meaningful information gathered using these tools varies across the discover, evaluate, and commit phases of the buying journey.

There are lots more data points in our report. Have a read, and contact us via inquiry@forrester.com to discuss our findings.

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