AI Solution Providers Shift From AI Features to AI-Enabled Execution

About this update from The Hackett Group, Inc.

The Hackett Group ® research examines how procurement, finance and human capital management solution providers are evolving AI from productivity tools to embedded execution capabilities MIAMI, July 14, 2026 --( BUSINESS WIRE )-- 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.

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