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Will a DAP Become the Must-Have Software App in 2026?

Will a Digital Adoption Platform Become a Must-Have App in 2026?

Analyst(s): Keith Kirkpatrick
Publication Date: December 15, 2025

As organizations adopt agentic AI and cross-platform workflows, a digital adoption platform may be the software needed to drive usage, monitor KPI achievement, and ensure seamless workflows across multiple platforms.

What is Covered in this Article:

  • WalkMe doubled down on its mission to close the digital adoption gap, reframing adoption as continuous change management and outlining a roadmap centered on embedding AI natively into every workflow, from real-time input validation to omnipresent context-aware chat and action bars.
  • The company introduced expanded agentic AI and intelligent automation capabilities, designed to overcome common deployment barriers—such as missing APIs, trust and auditability concerns, and fragmented user experiences—using context-driven automation, natural language prompts, and native browser integrations rather than screen scraping.
  • WalkMe launched its new Learning Arc platform, a modern digital learning solution featuring AI-assisted content creation, in-flow contextual learning, and continuous reinforcement, initially targeted at SAP Enable Now customers but planned for broader market expansion.

The Event – Major Themes & Vendor Moves: WalkMe, the digital adoption platform (DAP) provider that was acquired by SAP in 2024, held its annual analyst event in New York in mid-December. The event was designed to illustrate how the company plans to engage with customers over the coming months and quarters, highlight new features of the platform, and reinforce the go-to-market strategy originally laid out at the beginning of 2025.

CMO Adrial Sanchez reaffirmed the company’s mission to solve the digital adoption gap, emphasizing that technology value is only realized when end users adopt and utilize new tools as intended. As such, digital adoption is being framed as change management, which encompasses both technology and people, and is a continuous process within most organizations. WalkMe is focusing on three pillars to guide its roadmap over the next year:

Embedding AI into Every Workflow: Recognizing slow and uneven AI adoption in the enterprise market, WalkMe is developing solutions to seamlessly embed AI natively across workflows. Product examples include offering real-time AI-powered input validation in forms and leveraging company policy via LLMs to check user entries.

In addition, omnipresent AI chat and action bars are used to provide context-aware next-best-actions across any application in the ecosystem. WalkMe also leverages an AI rule engine that surfaces guidance based on both the user’s role and the real-time on-screen context. These features aim to drive real business value and accelerate AI adoption, and the platform provides flexibility for organizations to bring their own LLMs if preferred.

Agentic AI and Intelligent Automation: WalkMe is introducing enhanced agentic AI capabilities focused on automation that bridge gaps current AI agents or APIs cannot address. Three challenges often emerge for organizations that seek to deploy agentic AI beyond a single application: a lack of APIs for critical tasks, difficulties in providing trust and auditability in AI task execution, and fragmented user experiences across different agent platforms.

WalkMe’s approach centers on context-driven automation created via natural language prompts, with built-in auditability so organizations can review and approve automated workflows before deployment. Notably, WalkMe says the approach avoids privacy issues related to “screen scraping” by relying on native browser integrations for data and actions.

Reimagined Digital Learning — WalkMe Learning Arc: WalkMe announced the general availability of “WalkMe Learning Arc,” the company’s new digital learning platform designed to integrate modern learning approaches that increase relevancy and retention. The key capabilities of Learning Arc include:

  • Scalable content authoring using AI to transform raw learning and training materials into deployable, editable learning paths, including “drag and drop” course creation that can incorporate multimedia assets
  • In-flow learning, delivered precisely at a user’s moment of need based on contextual behavioral data.
  • Continuous reinforcement of training, targeting users who demonstrate learning gaps in real usage.

The product can be adopted standalone or as an extension to the WalkMe Digital Adoption Platform.

Will a DAP Become the Must-Have Software App in 2026?

Analyst Take: WalkMe’s end-of-year Analyst Summit focused on a few key themes that are cropping up within other SaaS platform marketing pitches. And while the messaging is similar to competitors, there is no doubt significant value in these approaches and themes, particularly in an era where agentic AI is becoming ubiquitous, and tech users increasingly expect data from any source to be available in the application of their choosing.

The WalkMe platform includes enhanced segmentation and analytics capabilities to provide visibility into who is using AI features and how effectively. This is critical as organizations often struggle to understand what AI features are resonating with users, and what friction points inhibit usage. As AI continues to evolve and proliferate, ensuring that users can quickly become familiar with and utilize AI will be paramount to scaling it across the organization.

In addition, WalkMe emphasized how its solutions lean on incorporating “context” throughout the platform, enabling experiences that adapt to user role, on-screen activity, and organizational policies. This is a critical element that enables the software to quickly adapt to an individual user or role, thereby reducing the time to value, particularly when it comes to incorporating or pulling in data from multiple different sources or applications, such as accessing visualization data within Slack, or accessing Adobe’s content creation tools within ChatGPT.

WalkMe’s announcement of the general availability of its new Learning Arc digital learning solution is an interesting play. According to the company, the initial plan is to market it to SAP’s Enable Now customers as a more modern learning platform, but the company expects to branch out and offer it to net new customers in the future. As humans and technology continue to work closely together (particularly in an agentic-dominated environment), we expect there will be strong demand for training content that can be provided in multimodal, contextual, and bite-sized slices that are designed for today’s learners.

Most importantly, the analyst summit reinforced a message that was first presented about a year ago, when the SAP acquisition was fresh off the presses. WalkMe leadership stressed that WalkMe would continue to operate and serve customers across any platform, and that appears to continue to be the case today. This approach not only ensures that WalkMe retains credibility in the marketplace as an independent DAP, but also ensures that it can serve today’s organizations, which will continue to operate heterogeneous technology and application stacks.

What to Watch:

  • WalkMe’s push to embed AI directly into every step of the workflow—including validation, policy enforcement, and next-best-action—raises the competitive bar for delivering real-time, contextual assistance that adapts to user role, screen state, and application environment.
  • WalkMe’s approach to agentic automation, particularly its focus on handling tasks where APIs don’t exist and providing built-in auditability, signals a shift toward DAPs becoming orchestration layers for enterprise AI. Competitors must evolve beyond simple overlays to automation that is trustworthy, reviewable, and secure.
  • The launch of Learning Arc—AI-generated content, in-flow reinforcement, contextual triggers—positions learning as a core part of digital adoption, not an add-on. Vendors should expect rising customer expectations for integrated learning that is adaptive, bite-sized, and tightly linked to real usage behavior.
  • WalkMe’s continued platform-agnostic stance and advanced segmentation/usage analytics underscore growing enterprise requirements for DAPs that operate across heterogeneous stacks and provide clear insight into AI adoption, friction points, and user behavior. Vendors that remain tied to single ecosystems or offer shallow analytics risk losing ground.

You can learn more about WalkMe at its website.

Disclosure: Futurum is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.

Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum as a whole.

Other insights from Futurum:

WalkMe Announces AI-Powered Digital Learning Solution

SAP Delivers 28% Cloud Growth, Reaffirms FY 2025 Outlook in Q2 FY 2025

WalkMe Highlighted as Core Element of SAP’s Digital Transformation Strategy

Author Information

Keith Kirkpatrick is Research Director, Enterprise Software & Digital Workflows for The Futurum Group. Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.

He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.

In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.

He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).

Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.

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