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Brands Risk Losing Competitive Advantage Without a Clear Cost or Value Strategy, Says Info-Tech Research Group

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Many organizations struggle to stand out because their investments, operations, and brand messaging support competing priorities. A new blueprint from Info-Tech Research Group outlines a three-step approach to help leaders choose between cost and value leadership, address capability gaps, and strengthen their competitive position.

ARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Organizations that lack a clear strategic position often spread resources across competing priorities, create inconsistent market messaging, and struggle to establish a meaningful competitive advantage. To help leaders address this challenge, global research and advisory firm Info-Tech Research Group has published its new blueprint, Position Your Brand Strategically as a Cost or Value Leader. The research provides a structured approach for choosing how the organization will compete and turning that decision into a focused action plan.

The firm’s resource explains that cost and value leadership require different operating models. Cost leaders depend on efficiency, standardization, and disciplined cost control to serve price-sensitive markets. Value leaders rely on innovation, customer experience, and brand strength to earn premium pricing. Organizations that try to pursue both approaches without making clear tradeoffs can become “stuck in the middle,” without a sustainable cost advantage or meaningful differentiation.

“Clear strategic positioning is essential for creating alignment and focus across the organization,” says Nathalie Vezina, a research director at Info-Tech Research Group. “When leaders do not explicitly choose between cost and value leadership, teams can pull in different directions, investments become diluted, and customers may struggle to understand what the brand stands for. A unified strategy helps organizations direct resources toward the capabilities that will strengthen their competitive position.”

Info-Tech Outlines Three Steps for Establishing a Clear Strategic Brand

The Position Your Brand Strategically as a Cost or Value Leader blueprint includes practical assessments and planning tools to help organizations move from strategic ambiguity to focused execution.

In the blueprint, the firm recommends the following three steps:

Step 1: Diagnose the Organization’s Current Position. A clear strategic position starts with determining whether the organization’s strengths are better suited to cost efficiency or differentiated value. Info-Tech’s assessment examines factors such as operational costs, pricing, profit margins, innovation investment, standardization, product quality, and target customers. The results help reveal whether the organization has a clear position or is still balancing conflicting priorities.Step 2: Make the Strategic Tradeoff Explicit. Organizational leaders then compare their cost structure and level of differentiation with relevant competitors. Info-Tech advises leaders to benchmark against companies with similar capabilities, scale, and target audiences instead of automatically comparing themselves with the largest brands in the market. This analysis can also reveal underserved customer needs or less crowded markets where the organization has a stronger opportunity to compete.Step 3: Identify Gaps and Build an Action Plan. After selecting a strategic position, leaders identify the capabilities and practices that must change. Cost leaders may need to improve operational efficiency, reduce waste, standardize offerings, refine pricing, or simplify the supply chain. Value leaders may need to strengthen research and development, product differentiation, brand perception, customer experience, and communication of their unique value. The action plan should prioritize the gaps that directly affect the organization’s ability to succeed with its chosen strategy.

Info-Tech’s blueprint further emphasizes that the chosen strategic position should shape organizational culture.

The firm advises that cost leadership requires accountability for efficiency and precise operations, while value leadership depends on creativity, customer understanding, and continued investment in differentiated offerings. Aligning culture, resources, and decision-making with the chosen strategy helps turn strategic clarity into consistent execution.

For exclusive commentary from Info-Tech’s experts, including Nathalie Vezina, or to access the complete Position Your Brand Strategically as a Cost or Value Leader blueprint, please contact pr@infotech.com.

About Info-Tech Research Group
Info-Tech Research Group is the “get things done” partner for over 30,000 IT, HR, and marketing leaders worldwide. The fastest growing research and advisory firm, Info-Tech enables leaders to make well-informed decisions and transform their organizations through AI, strategic foresight, step-by-step methodologies, practical tools, industry-leading advisory, and training programs. For nearly 30 years, tens of thousands of private and public organizations have trusted Info-Tech to lead their most important initiatives through periods of change and deliver outcomes that truly matter.

To learn more about Info-Tech’s HR research and advisory services, visit McLean & Company, and for data-driven software buying insights and vendor evaluations, visit the firm’s SoftwareReviews platform.

Media professionals can register for unrestricted access to research across IT, HR, and software, and hundreds of industry analysts through the firm’s Media Insiders program. To gain access, contact pr@infotech.com.

For information about Info-Tech Research Group or to access the latest research, visit infotech.com and connect via LinkedIn and X.

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SOURCE Info-Tech Research Group

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webAI Lands $30 Million AI Deal With Forge as Enterprise AI Services Race Accelerates

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Forge commits $30 million to webAI as the companies partner to build and deploy private, specialized AI systems inside enterprises.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — webAI today announced a strategic partnership with Forge AI Deployment, which is making a $30 million commitment to webAI to build and deploy private, specialized AI systems for enterprise customers.

The partnership pairs webAI’s collaborative intelligence platform with Forge’s enterprise deployment and services operation. Forge will work directly with customers to build AI systems around their proprietary data, workflows and operations, running on infrastructure those customers control.

The agreement comes as the AI market begins shifting from building increasingly capable general-purpose models to putting specialized intelligence to work inside businesses.

Forge is led by enterprise technology veterans, including founder and CEO John Ezzell, who previously built an Oracle-focused services and reseller business that was acquired by Deloitte. Forge is applying a similar playbook to AI: combining a new technology platform with the implementation, integration and operational expertise required to make it useful inside large organizations.

webAI provides the intelligence layer behind that effort.

Rather than relying solely on a general-purpose model, webAI enables organizations to deploy specialized models around their own data, people and operations. Those models can run across infrastructure the organization controls and collaborate as a system.

Forge will design, deploy and operate those systems for customers, from individual specialized AI Personas to company-wide deployments.

“A general model is only the beginning,” said David Stout, co-founder and CEO of webAI. “Individuals and organizations need intelligence deeply specialized to them. We believe the path to super intelligence (SI) isn’t one model that knows everything; it’s specialized intelligence working together. Collaboration gets us there faster.”

From AI models to AI infrastructure

webAI calls this emerging architecture the decision factory: intelligence built around the unique knowledge, expertise and workflows of an organization and deployed wherever decisions are made.

Instead of relying on a single general-purpose model, specialized AI Personas can operate as domain experts and work together across webAI’s Intelligence Delivery Network (IDN), a private network of compute controlled by the organization.

Forge will take responsibility for turning that technology into working enterprise systems, including architecture, secure deployment, model integration and optimization.

“Enterprises don’t need another AI demo,” said John Ezzell, founder and CEO of Forge AI Deployment. “They need AI that actually works inside their business. The opportunity is to take this technology from experimentation to production, and webAI gives us the infrastructure to do that.”

The partnership also expands webAI’s growing ecosystem of systems integrators, software companies and channel partners building, deploying and distributing specialized AI solutions on its platform across commercial and public-sector markets.

For enterprises, the shift is simple: AI stops being something they subscribe to and becomes intelligence they own.

About webAI
webAI is building collaborative intelligence: a private, local-first approach to AI in which specialized models run close to where work happens and collaborate with one another and the people they support. webAI enables individuals and organizations to create, own and deploy specialized intelligence across their own devices and environments. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, webAI’s mission is to make powerful AI accessible, personal and collaborative. Learn more at webai.com.

About Forge AI Deployment
Forge AI Deployment is an official webAI systems integrator that designs, installs and operates sovereign AI systems inside infrastructure customers control, including enterprise data centers, edge sites and air-gapped or disconnected enclaves. Combining more than two decades of work in high-consequence and Fortune 100 environments with webAI’s local-first platform, Forge provides end-to-end architecture, secure deployment, model integration and optimization while keeping institutional knowledge within the customer’s perimeter.

Media Contact
webAI@pinkston.co

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SOURCE webAI

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NAIC Letter Details Proactive State Oversight of Evolving Insurance Landscape

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WASHINGTON, Sept. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — In response to a letter from U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), state insurance regulators leading the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) today detailed how the state-based regulatory framework is evolving alongside insurers’ changing investment strategies, ownership structures, and risk-transfer arrangements.  

“Rather than relying on a static regulatory framework, regulators have regularly updated capital requirements, reporting standards, supervisory tools, and analytical capabilities to address emerging risks while maintaining a consistent focus on insurer solvency and policyholder protection,” said NAIC leadership.

Among other actions, this work includes:

Strengthening asset-adequacy testing through Actuarial Guideline 53 (AG 53) to provide greater consistency in evaluating the risks associated with complex and higher-yielding assets supporting life insurance business.

Intensifying oversight of certain life insurance and annuity reinsurance transactions through Actuarial Guideline 55 (AG 55), including setting higher expectations for asset-adequacy analysis and reserve adequacy.

Instituting a 45% risk-based capital charge for residual interests in structured securities to ensure that capital requirements appropriately recognize investment risk.

Creating a formal process for evaluating whether credit rating providers’ methodologies and rating mappings remain appropriate for regulatory purposes.

As NAIC leaders noted, “State insurance regulators continually evaluate whether the solvency framework appropriately captures emerging and changing risks.”

This adaptive approach, built on collaboration and coordination, has enabled state-based insurance regulation to lead for more than 150 years and will continue to guide it in an ever-changing insurance landscape.

Resources

Full Letter

NAIC Resource Center: Private Credit and Insurance Regulation

State-Based Regulatory Timeline for NAIC’s Solvency Oversight

About the National Association of Insurance Commissioners

As part of our state-based system of insurance regulation in the United States, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) provides expertise, data, and analysis for insurance commissioners to effectively regulate the industry and protect consumers. The U.S. standard-setting organization is governed by the chief insurance regulators from the 50 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories. Through the NAIC, state insurance regulators establish standards and best practices, conduct peer reviews, and coordinate regulatory oversight. NAIC staff supports these efforts and represents the collective views of state regulators domestically and internationally.

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SOURCE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF INSURANCE COMMISSIONERS

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INVESTOR ALERT: Pomerantz Law Firm Investigates Claims On Behalf of Investors of ServiceTitan, Inc. – TTAN

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NEW YORK, Sept. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of ServiceTitan, Inc. (“ServiceTitan” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: TTAN). Such investors are advised to contact Danielle Peyton at newaction@pomlaw.com or 646-581-9980, ext. 7980.

The investigation concerns whether ServiceTitan and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices. 

[Click here for information about joining the class action]

On September 8, 2026, ServiceTitan reported second quarter 2027 earnings. Among other items, the Company reported that “[b]ecause Max” – ServiceTitan’s AI-powered enterprise software package – “requires substantial change management, we typically do not bill subscription fees for the first quarter of an upsell Max contract, and we have also elected not to charge existing customers an onboarding fee when transitioning to Max. As a result of these factors, we expect both our platform revenue and professional services revenue to grow at a slower pace for the remainder of fiscal 2027.” The Company further reported that “[w]e expect the mix shift to Max to lower professional services revenue by roughly an additional $2 million over the remainder of this fiscal year, which, of course, also flows through to professional services gross margin.”

On this news, ServiceTitan’s stock price fell $24.46 per share, or 29.98%, to close at $57.12 per share on September 9, 2026.

Pomerantz LLP, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Tel Aviv, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, Pomerantz pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 85 years later, Pomerantz continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomlaw.com.

Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

CONTACT:
Danielle Peyton
Pomerantz LLP
dpeyton@pomlaw.com
646-581-9980 ext. 7980

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SOURCE Pomerantz LLP

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