2025 was a year of change. New technologies and priorities shape the daily lives of companies, developers, and users. The focus: Digital Security, AI across all areas, TEI (Total Economic Impact) as a benchmark for every investment, and technology as a holistic approach that intelligently connects processes, tools, and people.
As your Digital Experience Partner, we want to share our learnings from various industries and sectors – that’s why we have summarized the most important focus topics and highlights of 2025 for you.
New Requirements and Regulations: Cybersecurity and Digital Accessibility
In 2025, requirements for companies became significantly stricter: businesses must now demonstrably ensure that their digital services are accessible, customer data remains protected, and automated processes run reliably and securely. The EU tightened standards for both digital accessibility and IT security: new regulations such as NIS-2 and the European AI Act mandate robust protection measures for online shops, data processing, and AI systems.
Our guide “3 Vulnerabilities That Put Your IT Security at Risk” highlights the biggest risks that can lead to severe incidents in practice. Plus: real cybercrime cases and concrete learnings for your company. As part of the Digital Bash, there was also an exciting exchange on Application Security. The recording can be found here.
In our whitepaper Digital Accessibility – How to Make Your Platform Accessible for Everyone, we provide an overview of current guidelines and new laws, code examples for key frontend elements, and further links to reputable and free web tools.
AI 2025: From Hype to Lived Reality
One of the most notable developments in 2025: the fundamental debate “AI – Opportunity or Risk?” is practically over. AI tools are now part of everyday life in large companies, helping to perform tasks faster, more efficiently, and often even better.
Key Developments:
SEO for AI: GenAI tools are completely transforming search engine optimization. Increasingly, AI-powered assistants provide answers instead of traditional search engines. Our guide “Content for the AI Era” shows you how to optimize your content for AI visibility. There was also a Digital Bash expert talk on this topic – the recording is available here.
Agentic AI: AI agents can autonomously analyze ongoing workflows, determine the next logical steps, and execute them independently – significantly increasing the efficiency of automated processes and relieving teams. As this approach becomes increasingly important, providers are responding – for example, Salesforce with Agentforce, a platform that allows agentic workflows to be easily created, orchestrated, and integrated into existing business processes.
Rapid AI Implementation: With the Composable AI Suite, we enable you to implement tailored AI solutions for your company quickly and efficiently. With prebuilt modules, cloud-native architecture, and an API-first approach, use cases can be integrated directly into existing systems – from CMS to e-commerce to individual workflows.
Digital Experience in Transition: Financial Services and Pharma
The increasing demands on Digital Experience were particularly noticeable in 2025 in the financial services and pharma sectors, highlighting the importance of a Total Experience approach as a connected ecosystem of skills, services, and experts.
In the financial sector, banks, insurers, and fintechs increasingly rely on seamless, personalized, and trust-building customer experiences. Focus areas: AI-powered automation, integrated platform solutions, and cross-channel strategies that connect traditional touchpoints with digital services.
In the pharma and life sciences sector, interactions with patients, healthcare professionals, and other stakeholders are fundamentally changing: digital portals, e-consent platforms, modern CRM systems, and data-driven insights enable individual, regulation-compliant journeys – creating patient-centered experiences that build trust and increase communication and service efficiency.
Our Digital Experience Playbook for Financial Services shows how banks and insurers can design digital services as standard and provides practical insights, best practices, and a checklist for optimizing customer interaction on mobile and digital channels.
The guide CRM as a Key Factor in Pharma 2025+ demonstrates how pharma companies can use CRM not just as a tool but as a strategic lever to better reach HCPs and patients, comply with regulations, and use AI intelligently – including practical examples, vendor comparisons, and a checklist to get started immediately.
Tech Investments with Foresight: TEI as a Guiding Factor for Strategic Decisions
2025 also showed that due to the global economic situation, companies are becoming more cost-conscious in their investments. This means that in 2026, companies will pay even more attention to the Total Economic Impact (TEI) of their investments. Classic “nice-to-have” investments take a back seat – the focus is on solutions that demonstrably reduce costs, streamline processes, or drive revenue growth.
The key principle: technology needs context. Most projects fail not because of the technology itself, but because change management and organizational integration are missing. Considering these factors significantly increases the success rate of tech investments.
Our guide Strategic Technology Decisions for Real Business Value helps you make technology decisions strategically, measurably, and future-proof – including a cheat sheet with 5 questions for quick and safe vendor evaluation and valuable tips on how organizational integration ensures the success of your tech investments.
diva-e Conclusion: Leading Provider for Digital Experience and Business Transformation
Since our 2024 merger, diva-e Conclusion has been growing every day as a European powerhouse for digital experience and business transformation. As part of our growth strategy, we are excited that GABO has been part of the Conclusion Intelligence family since November 2025, strengthening our competencies in business intelligence and AI-powered data solutions. Together, our teams bring their expertise, drive customer projects forward, and develop solutions that truly make an impact.
Our path is confirmed by the current Lünendonk study on the digital experience service provider market: it shows how strong we have become with our combined know-how and portfolio.
We are delighted to be at the top of the market again and, alongside companies such as Deloitte and Accenture, are among the most important providers of holistic digital experience services (DXS) in Germany. The full study can be downloaded here.
Wrap-up: That Was 2025 with diva-e Conclusion
A year full of highlights lies behind us – with inspiring topics and people, exciting formats, and many shared successes.
Our special event moments included the Masterclass at OMR with dm Tech and Storyblok around the jointly developed career portal, as well as our pre-event with Scayle, FactFinder, and Amplience. Another highlight was our workshop “Weleda in Digital Transformation” with Andrea Lederer at K5, where we welcomed a record number of participants.
With our KI Growth Leaders Sessions, we also brought experts such as David Shell, Luc Bams, and Frank Knobloch on stage, providing valuable insights into the future of AI-driven business development.
And of course – last but not least – adaptTo(), where again almost 200 of the brightest developer minds came together to discuss the future of AEM and further advance the community.
Above all, what remains memorable are the many encounters, conversations, and inspiring people we met this year.
And in the new year, the motto remains: seize opportunities and shape innovation. We look forward to creating new digital experiences with our clients and partners and actively shaping the key topics and trends of 2026.
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We thank you and already wish you happy holidays and a successful start to 2026.
