Digital Transformation

Global – October 27, 2026 -- No single tool replaces an Excel macro end to end: six options (Power Query, Office Scripts, Power Automate, Python, RPA and Alteryx One) each cover a different slice of the work, according to a new comparison of automation approaches.

Power Query and Office Scripts cover data preparation and workbook tasks

Power Query suits macros that mainly import files and cleanse data, and it can reshape and aggregate data before loading it. It handles button clicks, workbook events and precise output formatting poorly.

Office Scripts is the closest native Microsoft 365 option. It runs recorded or edited TypeScript in Excel for the web or the desktop app on Windows or Mac. It has no Excel-level events, and Microsoft documents that VBA offers broader desktop coverage.

Global – October 27, 2026 -- A Monday inventory consolidation that took 90 minutes of manual cleanup and cross-checking now runs unattended overnight, after its logic was moved out of one analyst's head and into documented workflow steps.

The case illustrates a point Alteryx makes in guidance for spreadsheet users: slow, error-prone reporting is rarely caused by wrong logic. It is caused by logic that exists only in formulas, tab names and one person's habits. The recommended fix is to capture the steps first and choose the tool afterward.

Key-person dependency, not formula errors, is the main failure point

Typical breakages include a renamed column that disrupts a position-based formula, a data set that outgrows a row limit, and two people editing one file so that one set of changes is lost. When the analyst who built the process changes teams or leaves, the successor must reverse-engineer each tab, often at report deadline.

London – October 26, 2026 -- The Government Digital Service (GDS) is rolling out passkeys across GOV.UK One Login, giving more than 23 million users a faster and more secure way to sign in to government services.

GDS extends passkeys to its 23-million-user sign-in platform

The rollout covers GOV.UK One Login, the single sign-in system for UK government services. GDS describes the change as a simpler and more secure access route for the platform's user base of more than 23 million people.

GOV.UK Pay reaches its 10-year mark as a core public sector platform

GDS launched GOV.UK Pay 10 years ago. The platform is used by public sector service teams and is described by GDS as one of its flagship platforms.

Global – October 26, 2026 -- Cloudflare is pitching Cloudflare WAN, a network-as-a-service offering within its Cloudflare One SASE platform, as a way to augment or replace legacy MPLS and SD-WAN deployments with a "light-branch, heavy-cloud" architecture.

Cloudflare WAN shifts network functions from branch hardware to the cloud

Enterprises connect sites through the Cloudflare One Appliance, offered as a physical or virtual unit, which steers traffic onto the Cloudflare network. Cloudflare WAN then enforces Cloudflare One security policies and delivers traffic to other sites, Internet applications and cloud workloads. The company says traffic can be on-ramped in minutes using zero-touch configuration, with connectivity and security managed from a single interface.

Global – October 26, 2026 -- Cloudflare prices its Workers serverless platform at $0.30 per million requests and $0.02 per million CPU milliseconds, billing for execution time rather than idle time spent waiting on I/O.

Workers drops pre-provisioned concurrency fees

The pricing table also lists 100,000 requests per day and 10 ms of CPU time per request. Cloudflare says customers pay no markup for concurrency and do not pay for pre-provisioned capacity, so launch-day traffic scales with demand. The platform scales from zero to millions of requests.

Isolate architecture removes cold starts across 335+ cities

Workers run on isolates, which Cloudflare describes as an order of magnitude more lightweight than containers. The company states the platform has no cold starts. Code deploys by default to Cloudflare's 335+ cities, while Smart Placement runs functions near a customer's data to cut end-to-end latency.

Global – October 25, 2026 -- A survey cited by Whatfix found that 67% of technical professionals want real-world, practical application when learning new technology. Whatfix is using the figure to argue that enterprises should add sandbox training environments to LMS courses, in-person training and user documentation.

Sandbox replicas let employees practice workflows without touching production data

A sandbox training environment is a controlled replica of a software application. Users practice tasks there without affecting production data, live transactions or business operations. The most effective versions recreate approvals, exceptions, customer scenarios and compliance steps, not just screen-by-screen navigation.

Boston – October 25, 2026 -- Informa TechTarget (Nasdaq: TTGT) has launched Buyer Intelligence, an AI-enhanced solution that applies three new AI skills to person-level intent data drawn from approximately 58 million permissioned first-party audience members.

CEO Gary Nugent said AI-optimized go-to-market systems depend on input quality, noting that outcomes "will only be as strong as their inputs."

Three AI skills target pitch preparation and segment selection

Pain Points surfaces the challenges buying group members are researching, based on the articles, videos and webinars they consume. It is designed to cut sales call preparation time.

Pitch Assist generates messaging guidance tailored to each account's business problems. Persona and ICP Intelligence ranks customer segments by current in-market activity, flags new personas and indicates when to re-evaluate an Ideal Customer Profile.

United Kingdom – October 24, 2026 -- A UK freight forwarder has recovered 800 hours of manual processing every month by automating proof-of-delivery (POD) handling across its 10-plus branches with PayCargo's AI-based document platform.

The company processes more than 10,000 deliveries a month and cannot invoice a customer until the signed POD has been processed and matched to its shipment. Each of its 10 branches previously ran a separate manual process. Operators scanned PODs individually, read shipment references off documents in mixed formats and typed every record into the Transport Management System (TMS). The result was information silos, delayed invoices and skilled staff tied up in data entry.

Europe – October 24, 2026 -- LKQ Europe is deploying Whatfix's Digital Adoption Platform and Product Analytics across LKQ Academy, a learning platform serving 70,000 registered users in 13 countries.

LKQ Academy is billed as Europe's largest digital learning provider for vehicle repair professionals

Whatfix, which describes itself as a global leader in agentic digital adoption platforms for enterprises, announced the deployment. The aim is to make learning simpler and more intuitive for the academy's user base. The rollout combines two Whatfix products: the Digital Adoption Platform and Product Analytics.

Whatfix is named in four 2026 Gartner Hype Cycle reports

Separately, Whatfix said it appears in four 2026 Gartner Hype Cycle reports. Two of them recognize it for Generative AI Simulators: the Hype Cycle for Future of Work and the Hype Cycle for Corporate Learning Technologies.

Global – October 24, 2026 -- KMS Lighthouse leads a 15-vendor ranking of AI-powered sales knowledge management systems (KMS), rated the best all-in-one option for sales teams losing deals to knowledge gaps.

Six recurring problems are slowing sales teams

The ranking cites six common failures: institutional knowledge that is never captured, data silos between departments, call volumes managers cannot track or grade, reps distracted by information searches, documentation-heavy bureaucracy, and slow onboarding that requires extended oversight of new hires.

An effective sales KMS must analyze calls in progress, surface Battle Cards and decision trees, and automate call summaries. It also needs read-and-write integration with existing CRM and cloud systems, built-in training, and management tools for review and feedback.