IBM and Adobe have deepened their partnership to deliver AI-powered customer experience orchestration solutions across industries, pairing Adobe’s Customer Experience Orchestration capabilities with IBM’s agentic AI platform and watsonx governance tools. The collaboration was announced at Adobe Summit, where IBM also received the 2026 Adobe Customer Experience Orchestration AI Technology Partner of the Year award for IBM watsonx.
New global research from the IBM Institute for Business Value, conducted in partnership with Adobe, reveals that companies lose an average of $29 million annually because they cannot react quickly enough to changing customer demands. Three-quarters of surveyed executives say their organizations are too slow to respond to evolving customer needs, while 88% say customers expect brands to anticipate their needs before they are expressed. The research also found that only 34% of the customer data organizations collect today is used to inform customer experience decisions, pointing to an orchestration gap rather than a data shortage.
The research identifies significant financial upside for organizations that close this gap. Those that successfully decode customer intent report 13% lower customer acquisition costs, a four-point advantage in customer satisfaction scores, and 6% higher retention rates. Organizations that pair AI-driven responsiveness with clear governance report 12% higher marketing ROI and a 38% lift in customer lifetime value. Conversely, excessive delay in detecting and acting on customer signals drives a 30 to 40 percentage point drop in marketing ROI.
To address these challenges, IBM is introducing new industry-specific consulting strategies developed in collaboration with Adobe, starting with airlines and healthcare. In aviation, Adobe and IBM are helping carriers bring together traveler context, anticipate needs through predictive personalization, and build AI-driven commerce ecosystems that work across digital, physical, and operational touchpoints. IBM’s work with Riyadh Air served as an early proving ground, using an agentic concierge built on watsonx to assist staff in real time. In healthcare, the focus is on reducing administrative friction, connecting patient identity and context across channels, and streamlining workflows to improve the member experience.
On the technology side, IBM is integrating its watsonx technologies into Adobe Experience Platform to enable enterprise-grade agentic workflows with transparency and governance across predictive models, large language models, and agents. Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator and AI Agents are now available within watsonx Orchestrate’s Agent Catalog, allowing IBM customers to access the Adobe Marketing Agent directly alongside other enterprise tools. Red Hat OpenShift provides the infrastructure layer, enabling organizations to manage and deliver Experience Platform content across hybrid environments suited to regulated and complex enterprise settings.
KEY QUOTES:
“Patients deserve a connected experience. Whether they’re engaging with an insurer, a doctor, or a neighborhood clinic, their information should move with them, so they’re supported by the system, not forced to be the only thread tying it together.”
Eric Martinez, Chief Business Marketing Officer, The Cigna Group
“There is a massive delta between what customers can do and expect in their day-to-day life, and what aviation and travel companies are able to deliver. Either they can’t, or their mindset holds them back.”
Marvin James Burton, Director of Digital Experiences, Riyadh Air
