Report:
The Forrester Wave™: Customer Journey Management Platforms, Q4 2025
How does Forrester define the Customer Journey Management Platforms market in 2025?
Customer Journey Management (CJM) platforms are evolving from static journey maps to dynamic, actionable management systems that serve as command centers for customer experience decisions. These platforms enable organizations to move beyond visualizing journeys to actively managing and improving a portfolio of journeys through AI-assisted journey and persona creation, insight generation, storytelling, and opportunity scoring. The evaluation explores how vendors support a journey-centric strategy from insight generation to prioritization and execution, catering to organizations at different maturity levels. Key considerations include scalability and structure for enterprise adoption, flexibility for decentralized and agile teams, and the challenge that adoption often lags behind innovation as vendors balance AI investment with customer readiness.
Key Facts for The Forrester Wave™: Customer Journey Management Platforms, Q4 2025 in 2025
- Publication Date: 26-Nov-2025
- Document ID: 1223ecf4
- Summary: In our evaluation of customer journey management (CJM) platforms providers, we identified the most significant ones and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report shows how each provider measures up and helps you select the right one for your needs.
- Authors: Joana de Quintanilha
How did the Customer Journey Management Platforms market evolve in 2025?
- CJM platforms are evolving from static journey maps to dynamic, actionable management systems
- AI assistants are being integrated for journey and persona creation, insight generation, storytelling, and opportunity scoring
- 11 providers were evaluated in this Forrester Wave assessment
- Vendors are categorized as Leaders, Strong Performers, and Contenders
- Scalability and structure shape enterprise adoption for organizations managing hundreds of journeys
- Flexibility is key for decentralized and agile teams with distributed CX ownership
- Adoption of new capabilities often lags behind innovation pace
- Vendors are taking varied approaches to AI implementation, from bold agentic AI to cautious embedding
- Customer feedback indicators range from Outstanding (double halo) to Above Average (single halo) to Average (no halo)
What product features are required to be included in this year's evaluation?
- A comprehensive and standalone CJM platform. Each vendor in this evaluation offers core capabilities required for CJM at scale with a proprietary, productized software platform. Each vendor in this evaluation offers a platform that delivers journey management capabilities as a standalone offering.
- Features that go beyond a digital whiteboard to support journey management. We included vendors that enable organizations to collaboratively create, visualize, analyze, organize, and coordinate customer personas and customer journeys at scale. These platforms help to assess and optimize journey value for customer and company by driving continuous improvement across teams for a portfolio of journeys. To be included, a vendor's platform must include capabilities — such as customer journey analysis, business impact and journey ROI analysis, continuous testing, and prioritization — which allow CX pros to coordinate journey improvement actions.
- Broad, enterprise-level support. To be included, a vendor's platform must have a significant number of enterprise clients, market presence in multiple global regions, and be identified as a significant competitor by other leading vendors.
- Mindshare among Forrester's enterprise clients. Forrester clients frequently mention the product as one they're considering prior to a purchase. We have heard about the product from our clients in the form of inquiries, advisories, consulting engagements, and other interactions over the past year. Other vendors mention this vendor as a competitor.
What are the common features of top products in the Customer Journey Management Platforms space?
No common features specified.
Scope Exclusions
- Digital whiteboard tools without journey management capabilities beyond basic mapping
- Platforms lacking customer journey analysis and business impact/ROI analysis features
- Vendors without significant enterprise client base or global market presence
- Solutions not identified as significant competitors by other leading vendors
- Platforms without mindshare among Forrester's enterprise clients
- Non-standalone solutions that don't offer CJM as a proprietary platform
- Tools that don't support coordination of journey improvement actions at scale
Inclusion Criteria
Vendors must, among other requirements:
- A comprehensive and standalone CJM platform with proprietary, productized software
- Features that go beyond a digital whiteboard to support journey management at scale
- Broad, enterprise-level support with significant enterprise clients and global presence
- Mindshare among Forrester's enterprise clients and recognition as a significant competitor
Offering Strengths — Relative Weighting
- Journey storytelling — 8%
- Journey map creation — 4%
- Persona creation and analysis — 4%
- Linking and organizing journeys — 6%
- Collaboration, co-creation and ideation — 4%
- Sharing maps and insights — 4%
- In-map data visualization quality — 4%
- Data integration into platform — 4%
- Customer journey analysis — 4%
- Business impact and journey ROI analysis — 8%
- Identify journey improvements — 4%
- Prioritization — 6%
- Journey validation — 4%
- Coordinate journey improvement actions — 7%
- Integration with systems of record and engagement — 7%
- Implementation services — 4%
- Generative AI — 4%
- Usability — 6%
- Security — 4%
- Scalability — 4%
Strategy Strength — Relative Weighting
- Vision — 20%
- Innovation — 20%
- Roadmap — 10%
- Partner ecosystem — 10%
- Pricing flexibility and transparency — 20%
- Supporting services and offerings — 20%
FAQs
Q: What does this research cover?
A: This research evaluates 11 customer journey management (CJM) platform providers across current offering capabilities, strategy, and customer feedback. It examines how vendors support journey-centric strategies from insight generation to prioritization and execution, and how they cater to organizations at different maturity levels. The evaluation covers features including journey map and persona creation, collaboration and governance tools, AI-powered insights, data integration, and ROI tracking.
Q: Who should use this research?
A: CX professionals and technology decision-makers should use this research when evaluating CJM platform vendors for purchase decisions. It helps organizations understand how different vendors align with their needs based on factors like enterprise scalability requirements, organizational structure (centralized vs. decentralized), maturity level, and readiness for AI adoption. The research is particularly valuable for teams transitioning from journey mapping to execution and those seeking to operationalize customer-centric decision-making.
Q: What are the mandatory features of vendors included in this market?
A: To be included in this evaluation, vendors must offer: 1) A comprehensive, standalone CJM platform with proprietary software that goes beyond basic mapping; 2) Advanced journey management features including collaborative creation, visualization, analysis, organization, and coordination of personas and journeys at scale; 3) Capabilities for customer journey analysis, business impact and ROI analysis, continuous testing, and prioritization to coordinate improvement actions; 4) Broad enterprise-level support with significant enterprise clients, global market presence, and recognition as a significant competitor; 5) Strong mindshare among Forrester's enterprise clients as a frequently considered solution.
Q: What are some reasons for not being included in this report?
A:
- Offering only a digital whiteboard without advanced journey management capabilities
- Lacking features for customer journey analysis, business impact analysis, or ROI tracking
- Insufficient enterprise client base or limited global market presence
- Not recognized as a significant competitor by other leading vendors
- Minimal mindshare among Forrester's enterprise clients
- Not offering CJM as a standalone, proprietary platform
- Unable to support coordination of journey improvement actions at scale
- Missing capabilities for prioritization and continuous improvement workflows
Q: What should buyers consider when evaluating products in this market?
A:
- Scalability and structure needs - Vendors supporting hierarchical journey frameworks, cross-journey linking, and governance at scale are better for organizations managing hundreds of journeys, but require upfront investment in onboarding, taxonomy setup, and system integration
- Organizational structure and culture - Organizations with distributed CX ownership or product-led cultures benefit from platforms with modular usage, customizable views, role-based permissions, and stakeholder-specific views
- Data integration requirements - Seamless data integration is critical for connecting journey insights with operational metrics and driving collaboration across business units
- AI adoption readiness - Consider your organization's readiness for AI features and whether you prefer bold agentic AI automation or cautious, explainable AI with gradual rollout
- Change management capacity - Success depends heavily on change management, training, and ability to embed journey practices into daily operations, especially for teams transitioning from mapping to execution
- Storytelling and communication needs - Evaluate storytelling capabilities tailored for different audiences and community-building features like embedded guidance and templates
- Maturity level - Different platforms cater to different maturity levels, from organizations taking first steps in CJM to those with established journey centers of excellence
Q: How has the Customer Journey Management Platforms market evolved in 2025?
A:
- Evolution from static journey maps to dynamic, actionable management systems bolstered by AI assistants
- AI integration for journey and persona creation, insight generation, storytelling, and opportunity scoring
- Growing importance of data integration with operational metrics and systems of record
- Varied vendor approaches to AI - from bold agentic AI investments to cautious, explainable AI implementations
- Challenge of adoption lag - innovation speed outpacing customers' ability to operationalize new capabilities
- Increasing focus on proving ROI and linking journey insights to business outcomes
- Need for change management, training, and embedding journey practices into daily operations
- Scalability requirements for enterprises managing hundreds of journeys across regions and teams
- Demand for flexibility and modular usage to support decentralized CX ownership and agile cultures
Q: What differentiates Strength of Offering vs. Strength of Strategy?
A: Strength of Offering measures the vendor's current platform capabilities across journey creation, analysis, collaboration, data integration, AI features, and execution - essentially what the platform can do today. Strength of Strategy evaluates the vendor's future direction and business approach, including their vision for journey management, innovation investments (particularly in AI), product roadmap, partner ecosystem, pricing models, and support services - essentially where the vendor is heading and how they support customer success.
Reference
- Forrester, The Forrester Wave™: Customer Journey Management Platforms, Q4 2025, 26-Nov-2025, ID 1223ecf4
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