The client needed to know three things before committing engineering and go-to-market resources: is the demand real, who owns the buying decision, and what is blocking adoption today.
This is an illustrative sample. The scenario, the respondents, and every number on this page are invented. The purpose is to show a prospective client the shape of a ZAI custom research deliverable: what the findings look like, how they are evidenced, and the part a public report never includes, the strategic read for your specific decision.
The hypothetical brief: a Series B AI platform company is deciding whether to build an agent governance capability, the controls that let an enterprise oversee, log, and answer for the AI agents it runs. Before committing resources, the client commissioned thirty interviews with the senior operators who would own that purchase: CISOs, chief risk officers, heads of AI and data, and VPs of engineering at large enterprises.
Nearly three quarters of respondents expect to buy agent governance tooling within eighteen months. But none of them has a dedicated budget line for it yet. Today the spend is improvised out of adjacent budgets, which means every deal competes with something already funded.
We know we will need this. What I do not have is a line item called governance. So it comes out of security, and security has other plans for that money. CISO, financial services (illustrative)
Security and risk both consider agent governance their mandate. In the interviews, deals stalled most often not over price or features but over which function owned the purchase. When the two were aligned, the buying cycle was short. When they were not, it stopped.
The numbers total more than one hundred percent because in most organizations more than one function claimed it. That overlap is the finding. A vendor selling to one of them will lose the deal the moment the other is brought in late.
Asked what stands between them and a purchase, respondents pointed past cost. The dominant concern was whether a new tool would integrate with the GRC and security stack they already run, and what it would take to rip and replace an incumbent.
I am not worried about the sticker. I am worried about the six months of integration work and the audit I have to pass when it is done. Chief Risk Officer, healthcare (illustrative)
Pressed on what a product would need to win, respondents converged on two things: a clear, auditable accountability model and a complete audit trail of agent actions. Dashboards and analytics, the features most vendors lead with, ranked low.
A public report stops at the findings. A commissioned engagement turns them into a position. For this hypothetical client, the data points to four moves.
Seventy-three percent intend to buy within eighteen months and no incumbent owns the category yet. The risk is not whether the market exists. It is moving before the budget line hardens around a competitor.
The contested decision is the single biggest deal-killer in the data. Design the demo and the pilot for a joint buying committee, and make the first call a joint call. A single-threaded deal will stall the moment the second function appears.
These are the two capabilities that decide the purchase, and they are not where competitors are spending their messaging. Make them the wedge. Treat dashboards as table stakes, not the pitch.
Price is not the barrier. Integration and rip-and-replace are. A migration path and proof of integration with the common GRC and security stack will do more for close rates than a discount.
This sample depicts a hypothetical three-week engagement: thirty structured interviews with senior operators at large enterprises, spanning security, risk and compliance, AI and data, and engineering leadership, across eight industries. In a real engagement, sessions run for an hour, are recorded with consent, and are synthesized into ranked findings reported in aggregate and de-identified. No statement is attributed to a named individual or company without separate written consent.
Every name, quotation, and figure on this page is invented for illustration. It does not reflect any real respondent, organization, or commissioned study.
Custom engagements begin with a discovery conversation that defines the question and scopes the work. The first conversation is one hour.
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