Exploring Technical Challenges Through the Lens of AI

The AI Surge: Shifting Trends in Customer Inquiries

Over the past year, The Virtual Forge has seen a transformation in what customers are looking for, particularly in the types of inquiries we receive and the nature of our discovery calls. Whereas previous inquiries were more balanced across development, data consultancy, and data visualisation, a significant shift emerged by the end of 2024. A notable  70% of the inquiries now center around AI innovation.

However, our discovery sessions reveal that the situation is far more nuanced than simply an uptick in AI-related requests. We've encountered a range of genuine AI use cases, from cutting-edge web scraping applications to the burgeoning interest in AI-driven agents. Yet, many of our discussions reflect a deeper desire to tackle traditional data and development challenges through an AI lens.

Embracing AI: Opportunities and Challenges for Organisations

Adopting an AI perspective on these challenges has manifested in several interesting ways.

Firstly, we have observed that projects once regarded as commercially or technically unviable are now seen in a new light, with AI providing the means to make them feasible.

Secondly, numerous organisations express a strong willingness to explore and innovate with AI, eager to uncover practical ways to integrate this technology into their operations.

Lastly, there exists a robust aspiration among many organisations to transform and innovate; nevertheless, they often grapple with insufficient resources or capacity to implement these ambitious changes or an understanding of where to even start.

The underlying motivation driving these organisations transcends what I refer to as AI FOMO (fear of missing out on the AI revolution). At its core, the primary motivator is a palpable fear of falling behind the competition, coupled with an acknowledgment that the AI revolution is both real and advancing at an unprecedented pace. This realisation leads to an urgency—organisations can no longer afford to postpone their exploration of AI to next year; it must become an immediate priority.

The silver lining in this narrative is that organisations have the opportunity to dip their toes into the waters of AI innovation without the need for sprawling budgets typical of larger enterprises. There are numerous accessible avenues for smaller organisations to harness AI and effect meaningful change quickly. One could argue that smaller organisations often find themselves in an advantageous position, enabling them to experiment with and adopt transformative productivity tools more swiftly.

If you're interested in discussing the exciting possibilities that AI can offer your organisation, don’t hesitate to reach out and one of The Virtual Forge team would be happy to discuss what is possible.

How Can We Help?

At The Virtual Forge, we've helped some of the world's leading brands do exactly that by providing end-to-end AI services, from data and strategy to model development, deployment, and scale. Our AI services help our clients make sense of where, when, and how to use the range of new agents and services that are everywhere.

By focusing on 3 Pillars of AI — AI Integration and Enablement, AI Data Preparation, and AI Governance, we aim to help our clients make reasoned, informed, secure, and cost-effective decisions about tools and opportunities that will bring efficiencies and business process improvements.

Using AI, whether at scale or in a small proof of concept, is a process involving understanding what you want to achieve, measuring what success looks like, making sure data is in a state to be reliably used, and then governing the results and usage.

To learn more about how we can help you accelerate your AI journey, visit our AI Services Page or reach out at connect@thevirtualforge.com. We'd love to learn about your business challenges and discuss how AI can help.

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