For most B2B organizations, budgeting season is either just beginning or already in full swing. If you’re leading marketing operations, sales operations, or revenue operations functions, there are few guarantees about what 2026 has in store. With turbulent global markets, shifting trade alignments, and AI transforming businesses and buying, much of what we know is at risk of being upended. But one thing is certain: 2026 will test the resilience of B2B operations leaders.
In this post, I’ll draw from Forrester’s Budget Planning Guide 2026: Revenue Operations report (client-only access) to highlight what our team believes will help operations leaders adapt faster, invest smarter, and unlock new ways to drive value for your customers.
What Will Matter For Operations Leaders In 2026
Experienced marketing and sales leaders are heading into 2026 undeterred by the uncertainties of the larger business environment. Forrester’s Budget Planning Survey, 2025, showed that most are approaching 2026 with cautious optimism as the majority expects modest budget growth. Whether that optimism will endure amid systemic disruptions — impacting bookings volume or order fulfillment — remains to be seen. In the meantime, we expect go-to-market (GTM) leaders to proceed carefully and avoid investments that can’t be easily unwound as conditions fluctuate. Operations will need to play a critical role, ensuring that GTM functions are able to rapidly adjust as conditions shift.
What should operations leaders do? Three imperatives stand out:
Boost agility to confront uncertain conditions. One thing we know is that revenue operations leaders don’t believe their processes are flexible or efficient enough to allow them to respond to changing market conditions. Forrester’s Revenue Operations Survey, 2024, found that 49% of revenue operations leaders believe their processes aren’t flexible enough for fast response when conditions change, and 46% believe their processes are mostly manual and lack automation. If the business climate fluctuates, flexibility will become B2B’s most coveted asset in 2026 — the organizations most able to adapt will be best positioned to succeed.
Become the linchpin for GTM teams to win with AI. Advances in AI technologies promise productivity gains, game-changing breakthroughs, and a complete reimagining of what’s possible across all corners of GTM efforts. Yet organizations count on revenue operations functions to align longer-term vision with smooth execution by taking charge at the intersection of GTM process, technology, and people to drive value for customers and internal stakeholders. Isolating generative AI (genAI) efforts as a prime example, GTM leaders anticipate lack of understanding, difficulty of integration, data infrastructure, and employee readiness to be among their greatest challenges in making genAI work for them. Revenue operations must steer the vision by purposefully applying AI across GTM processes to reap the promised rewards.
Overcome insufficient data and process friction holding back GTM functions. To take advantage of AI’s promise of increased productivity and lower costs, organizations require data of quality, texture, and substance suitable to the task. Forrester’s Revenue Operations Survey, 2024, found that B2B organizations aren’t there yet, with 38% of revenue operations leaders believing that data lacking in accuracy and quality is among data users’ top challenges. Revenue operations must build a secure foundation of GTM data and processes to ensure readiness to support AI-enabled innovations.
What Does This Mean For 2026 Budgeting?
There’s no better expression of an organization’s priorities than where it applies its resources. To align resources with 2026 imperatives, operations leaders should:
Invest in adaptability. AI is expected to unlock a host of new potential, but to take advantage of this moment, operations leaders need to stay focused on applying it to make their organizations more flexible, nimble, and adaptable. Consider investments such as using AI to enhance your analytics with better indicators of the buyer’s true experience, adding efficiency by automating account research, and placing resources against upskilling operations folks to lead the GTM organization in applying AI.
Avoid lugging inefficiencies of the past into a more demanding future. Many outdated B2B practices persist due to the entrenched mindset of “that’s the way it’s always been done.” But creating more adaptable, efficient, and customer-obsessed GTM processes require B2B organizations to make room for the new by rooting out legacy investments that keep them locked in the past. Operations leaders can look for savings by moving away from antiquated sales role-plays, tactic-level marketing attribution, and fruitless pursuit of a single source of truth cutting across data sources.
Experiment with ways to create even greater agility. Revenue operations teams that dedicate their time to continuously resolving crises incessantly encounter new ones waiting for them. Now’s the time for forward-looking revenue operations leaders to experiment with new approaches that could drive adaptability. Develop experiments around adaptive planning, pilot new techniques for effort prioritization, and work on data ontologies that can power AI efforts.
Forrester clients can read our detailed recommendations in the report, Budget Planning Guide 2026: Revenue Operations, or register to join me and my colleagues for a webinar where we’ll discuss our budget recommendations in detail and answer your questions.
