Why market research matters for monday.com’s product and sales strategy

If AI is supposed to erase market research, the labor market and monday.com’s own business tell a more complicated story. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 7 percent employment growth for market research analysts from 2024 to 2034, with about 87,200 openings a year on average. For a company selling into crowded work management and CRM markets, that is not an abstract labor-market note. It is a reminder that someone still has to translate customer signals into product decisions, pricing strategy, and sales moves that actually land.

The numbers say this work is still in demand

The BLS puts the median annual wage for market research analysts at $76,950 in May 2024, but the more important number for monday.com is the growth outlook. The role exists because companies do not just need data. They need interpretation: who wants the product, what problem it solves, which competitors are winning attention, and what price a buyer will accept.

That is exactly the kind of judgment SaaS companies need when they are pushing into new workflows, layering in AI, and deciding whether to package a feature as an add-on, a platform capability, or part of a broader suite. The AI story gets louder every quarter, but it does not remove the need for human analysis. If anything, it increases the cost of being wrong about customer demand.

What market research actually owns inside a company

The public version of market research often sounds like dashboards and slide decks. The real job is more operational than that. Analysts design surveys that ask the right questions instead of the easiest ones. They segment customers so teams know which accounts want automation, which want visibility, and which care most about price. They track competitors closely enough to separate durable positioning from marketing noise.

Then comes the part that matters most to monday.com teams: translating findings into decisions. A strong analyst does not stop at “customers want easier setup.” They help product managers decide whether that means a workflow template, an onboarding change, an AI agent, or a new pricing tier. They help sales teams understand which objections are about budget, which are about trust, and which signal that a buyer is not the right fit.

For engineers, this matters because sharper customer insight reduces wasted work. A clearer read on demand means fewer features built for the wrong segment and fewer launches that solve a problem nobody is paying to fix.

Why monday.com needs this discipline now

monday.com says more than 250,000 customers worldwide use its platform, and its investor-relations page lists 4,547 customers above $50,000 in annual recurring revenue as of March 31, 2026. It also listed 3,211 employees on that date. In a company that size, market research is not a nice-to-have. It is part of how the business decides where the next dollar of growth comes from.

The urgency is higher because monday.com is still trying to win in a crowded category. In the first quarter of 2026, the company reported revenue of $351.3 million, up 24 percent year over year, along with record GAAP and non-GAAP operating income and record net adds of customers with more than $500,000 in ARR. At the same time, it launched the AI Work Platform with native agents and said its shift to consumption-based pricing builds on that momentum. Those are not just product headlines. They are signals that monday.com is changing how it sells, how it packages value, and how it measures usage.

That is where market research becomes a strategic input. Consumption-based pricing only works if the company understands which customer segments will embrace it, where friction will show up, and what language helps buyers see value without feeling trapped by complexity. AI-native agents raise the same questions in a different form: which workflows are ready for automation, which customers want augmentation instead of replacement, and what outcomes matter enough to drive adoption.

The workflows that matter most to product and sales

The most useful market research inside monday.com is probably not broad trend reporting. It is workflow-level intelligence that helps teams answer practical questions:

• Which customer pain points should become product bets next quarter?

• Which segments are price-sensitive, and which will pay for deeper automation?

• What language turns a feature into a business case?

• Which competitors are showing up in deals, and what is actually winning those comparisons?

That kind of work is especially valuable when a company is trying to move upmarket. monday.com said enterprise customers grew 34 percent from 3,201 at the end of 2024 to 4,281 at the end of 2025. It also said customers with more than $50,000 in ARR represented 41 percent of total ARR in FY2025. Those are signs of a business becoming more dependent on larger accounts, longer sales cycles, and more complex buying committees. Market research helps teams understand how those buyers think before a competitive deal is already in motion.

The company’s fastest-growing product, monday vibe, also offers a useful clue. In February 2026, monday.com said it became the fastest product in company history to surpass $1 million in ARR. That kind of breakout does not happen just because a feature exists. It happens because product, marketing, and sales are aligned on a customer problem worth solving. Research helps find that problem early, before the roadmap gets crowded with internal opinions.

Positioning is part of the product, not just the pitch

monday.com has also leaned hard into category positioning. It says it is the AI work platform, and its analyst-recognition pages say it was named a 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for Marketing Work Management Platforms. The company also says it is the only work management platform recognized as a Leader across three 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant reports.

That matters because market research is not separate from positioning. It is one of the ways a company decides what category it wants to own, which buyer it wants to convince, and which proof points it can defend. For monday.com, that means research is shaping more than messaging. It is shaping how the company explains itself as it moves from work management into a broader AI and workflow platform story.

The practical takeaway for monday.com employees is simple: market research is not a back-office function that sits far from the product. It is one of the few disciplines that directly connects what customers say, what sales hears, what product builds, and what the company can credibly price. In a market full of AI hype, that kind of judgment is still what turns signals into revenue.