Key findings from LXA's fifth annual State of Martech & Revenue Operations report, produced in partnership with LeanData.
201 senior marketing, sales, and revenue leaders at enterprise B2B organisations told us the same thing this year, just in different words: we believe in AI more than ever, and our operations aren't ready for it.
It's not a small gap. It's the defining tension of the whole report.
LXA's five-pillar maturity framework scores organisations across People & Teams, Platform & Technology, Pioneer & Pilot, Planning & Strategy, and Process & Operations. Every pillar has improved since 2023. But they haven't improved evenly. People & Teams now leads at 3.82 out of 5.0. Process & Operations trails at 3.66, and it's recorded the smallest gain of any pillar over three years running.
Talent and tools first, workflow last
That pattern tells a specific story. Organisations have hired well. They've bought the platforms. What they haven't done is build the workflows, governance, and cross-functional discipline that turn talent and tools into reliable execution.
It's an easy gap to miss internally, because on paper everything looks like progress. Headcount is up. The stack is arguably better. Experimentation is happening. But 51% of respondents still cite integration complexity as their top barrier, and only half feel confident their organisation could govern AI safely at scale.
Why this gets more expensive, not less
Two things are making this gap costlier in 2026 specifically. First, AI is adding volume to processes that were already straining: more leads, more content, more signals, all still needing to be routed and actioned by workflows built for a slower pace. Second, marketing-sales alignment keeps showing up as a top priority year after year, which is itself a signal: if it were really a relationship problem, it would have been solved by now. It's a process and data problem wearing a culture problem's clothes.
The organisations pulling ahead in this research aren't the ones with the most AI pilots. They're the ones treating operational discipline as the prerequisite, not an afterthought.
Read the full 2026 State of Martech & Revenue Operations report for the complete five-pillar breakdown and the six imperatives revenue leaders should prioritise this year.
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