As economic uncertainty continues into 2026, enterprise leaders are looking for opportunities to increase stability and company value. Increasingly, that requires making their organizations even more adaptable and resilient. Despite a majority of company leaders reporting extreme impacts from changing market conditions, many are already pursuing new initiatives to maintain their balance and foster growth in the year ahead.
At Personiv, we see six major value-creation and adaptability trends emerging from data collected in our 2025 Executive Outlook Pulse Survey in August 2025. The survey found that 62% of organizations endured “extremely significant” strategy and execution impacts due to economic shifts in the first half of 2025. In response, a majority of those surveyed have already begun investing in areas to strengthen their flexibility and agility.
AI deployment and expansion
The most common focus areas for investment are expansion of AI use cases and improved operational strategies, to maintain balance and make progress in choppy economic waters.
Based on survey responses, 76% of public companies are already using AI in some operational capacity, with 70% using AI for finance operations such as payroll, expense reporting and compliance. Forty-five percent of private companies are using AI in similar ways. Much of that AI is likely for automation, but agentic AI is emerging as a powerful resource for businesses that want to make their operations more resilient.
The World Economic Forum recently highlighted the business utility of AI agents. These agents can learn to act as “custodians of specific domains,” such as compliance or supply chain management, to not only orchestrate complex processes but also to “interpret and draw inferences from that domain.” That offers new potential for future-looking strategies.
Forecasting and strategic planning
The fast-improving ability to collect and analyze data insights with AI supports another trend we expect to continue through 2026: a strong focus on data-driven forecasting and planning. Close to a third of survey respondents rated forecasting and scenario planning as a priority, perhaps in part because forecasting was the area most strongly affected by economic changes in 2025.
However, less than a third of survey participants reported the use of AI in more than half of their finance and accounting functions. That underutilization suggests forecasting and strategic planning will be an area where AI adoption offers potentially large accuracy and efficiency gains in the coming year, especially if economic conditions continue to fluctuate.
Supply chain optimization
It’s not just internal operations that were affected by the economic environment; economic policy changes affected more than half of companies’ supply chains this year. Since the supply chain is already vulnerable to factors like geopolitical instability and weather events, this added uncertainty heightens the need for risk management. Survey respondents ranked supply chain disruptions among the three biggest emerging financial risks they’re preparing for moving forward.
Many organizations are already adopting AI to reduce supply chain risk, control costs and manage complexity. AI-powered automation can also accelerate standardized supply chain processes, since AI agents have the potential to monitor real-time conditions, foresee potential disruptions and quickly suggest alternate scenarios to minimize the impact of those disruptions.
CapEx and OpEx investment
Another way businesses will continue to build resilience next year is through strategic capital and operational expenditures. More than half of the survey respondents reported increased CapEx and OpEx spending in 2025, while a quarter planned to increase their spending in these areas. This trend is reflected across the U.S. economy, with CapEx growth racing ahead of sales growth this year. AI-related investments are driving the overall increase in CapEx spending, and that’s likely to continue through 2026.
Many organizations are building capital, operational and technical foundations for a stronger year ahead. Translating those investments into greater resilience requires talent, however, which is another area where many companies are investing.
Talent sourcing and optimizing
Finding skilled, experienced finance and accounting talent has been increasingly difficult for the past few years, but successfully filling those roles remains critical. In today’s market, finance and accounting teams spend most of their time helping their companies adjust to conditions as they change, which means staffing gaps can affect a company’s ability to pivot as needed.
Many of these teams already conserve their talent by using AI automation to handle repetitive, high-volume processes such as payroll processing, accounts receivable and accounts payable. But many organizations are also hiring, and therefore should consider potential applications of AI in the recruitment process. Thirty-eight percent of survey respondents said they plan to increase headcount in the next six months, on top of the 34% who already hired more people in 2025. Using AI for standardized processes will allow those employees to focus on helping their companies adapt as conditions change.
Cybersecurity prioritization
Threats to organizations’ cybersecurity were the top risk-related concern among survey respondents: Thirty-two percent reported that it’s the most important emerging risk for which they’re preparing. Executives and leaders are especially concerned about phishing, social engineering, ransomware and data breaches. Such attacks are becoming more common but also more difficult to identify because criminals are leveraging AI to make their attacks more effective.
Fortunately, AI can also be leveraged for increased defense, and we expect to see more companies use AI-backed cybersecurity tools to protect their finances and data. That trend is already in motion. This year, the worldwide average cost of a data breach dropped by 9% from 2024, to $4.4 million, in part because more companies are using AI-backed security tools to detect and stop attacks faster.
AI is a thread that runs through all these trends, from forecasting and supply chain optimization through capital investments, talent optimization, and cybersecurity and risk management. AI can equip enterprise leadership with the insights needed for good forecasts and planning, while freeing up finance and accounting teams to adapt to changes in the economy. When deployed thoughtfully, the value that AI can provide becomes a key ingredient for building resilient companies this year.
