IT Outsourcing Trends: The Rise of AI Innovations

IT Outsourcing Trends: The Rise of AI Innovations

The AI boom continued to send shockwaves across industries in 2024. If 2023 was the year of AI experimentation, 2024 became the year of large-scale AI implementation. From Apple to JPMorgan, virtually every major company devised an AI implementation strategy and released AI assistants to streamline routine tasks of employees. 

And it’s not limited to big business either – according to McKinsey, 70% of organizations have adopted AI to perform at least one business function in 2024, an increase of 22% compared to 2022. After years of stagnation, AI started to generate real value for organizations. 

As a forward-thinking software development company, we have shifted our focus towards enterprise AI solutions in 2024. In this report, we highlight the key AI projects we worked on in 2024 and explore the main trends in AI development that will shape the tech landscape in 2025. 

Enterprise AI solutions: key trends for 2025

In 2024, key market players boosted the capacities of their LLMs, enabling them to succeed in increasingly complex reasoning and decision-making tasks. Here are the trends that will shape AI in 2025. 

Agentic AI 

Agentic AI are systems that can autonomously complete tasks without requiring step-by-step instructions from humans. Unlike traditional AI assistants, which need prompts for every action, agentic AI can analyze a goal, break it into smaller steps, and create workflows to achieve it. 

For example, an agentic AI could be used to reset the password in an IT system. Similarly to a real person, it will identify the problem, find the necessary tools, and execute the reset without further input. 

For instance, Google’s latest Agentic AI – AI Mariner – can autonomously browse the web to complete tasks. When given a task, the bot controls Chrome to move the cursor, click buttons, and complete forms. 

By the end of 2025, this technology is likely to find initial implementation in small-scale internal tasks. An AI agent could schedule vacation days, update employee records, or resolve routine issues like refund requests. However, high-stakes applications, such as financial transactions or large-scale customer interactions, are not likely to be automated anytime soon. 

The rise of AI-native apps

From Google and Samsung to Salesforce and Hubspot, almost every major company has incorporated AI functionality into their products. Yet, in 2025, the focus will shift to AI-native applications.

AI-native apps are rapidly emerging as a dominant force in the tech industry, driven by unprecedented funding and innovation. In 2024, these startups secured over $45 billion in funding, a 70% increase from the previous year. This highlights the intense momentum behind AI-native companies—those built entirely around AI technologies—as they address diverse needs across industries.

The competition for AI talent fuels rapid advancements, which increase proof points across use cases that demonstrate the value of these applications. From tools that streamline customer support to systems that automate financial analysis, the AI-native applications are poised for the most significant growth in 2025.

Multimodal AI

Multimodal AI has been rapidly developing in 2024 and this will continue in 2025. Unlike earlier versions of GenAI like GPT 3.5, which typically handle a single type of input, multimodal AI combines text, images, audio, video, and other inputs to gain a comprehensive understanding and generate more refined outputs. 

For example, Google DeepMind's Gemini model can process and synthesize information from images, text, code, and video. It can take a photo and generate descriptive text or derive a written recipe from an image of food, which highlights its versatility.

The integration of multimodal capabilities into generative AI allows creating content across diverse media types and makes AI interactions more natural and intuitive. Multimodal AI systems capture more context, reduce ambiguities, and are more resilient to noise and missing data. 

At Apiko, we have been increasingly focusing on AI solutions for enterprise this year. Let’s take a look at how our AI services helped businesses to fully leverage the capacities of GenAI.  

AI solutions for enterprise: our projects in 2024

AI voice agents

In 2024, Apiko developed an AI voice agent system that effectively answers customer service queries of different levels of complexity. Trained on the vast amount of customer service data, our system is designed to automate routine tasks and reduce the workload on service agents in restaurants, hotels, and similar establishments. 

When our AI agents were implemented in a pizzeria chain, they successfully answered over 3000 customer calls over two months. The agents took thousands of orders, saving costs on customer service. Our AI agents also achieved a high upsell conversion rate, providing the chain with significant additional revenue. 

How did we achieve this?

  • We trained our agents on prompts, templates, and knowledge bases used by human employees at particular locations. This allowed our AI agents to mimic brand-specific tones, pronunciations, and key phrases. 
  • Our AI call center agents respond to multiple inbound calls simultaneously. This guarantees that customers are not left on hold and no order is missed by the team.
  • The developed system provides customer aftercare like outbound calls for updates, reminders, and feedback requests via texts. This reduces missed bookings and keeps customers engaged. 
  • Our agents are directly integrated with existing systems, which allowed us to automate tasks like printing receipts and submitting work orders. 

This exciting project enabled us to deepen our expertise in AI voice agent development and provide our clients with cutting-edge enterprise AI solution that perfectly integrates with their existing systems and saves significant costs on customer service. 

AI chatbots

Conversational AI chatbots were the first successful type of GenAI – and they continue to find applications in industries as different as construction and finance. 

Last year, we developed AI chatbots that rely on custom knowledge bases – datasets with internal information unavailable for standard LLMs like ChatGPT. 

At the beginning of the year, a full life cycle construction service provider Spawglass Construction Corp reached out to us with a problem – their process of construction estimating was slow and tedious. 

The business had collected a lot of historical data on labor, quantities of materials, equipment, and productivity, and yet, it was all unusable. Scattered and hard-to-use data forced construction estimators to do all the work from scratch each time.  

Our team had structured historical data, created a knowledge base, and developed an AI construction estimating chatbot connected to the database. This allowed the estimators to get all the historical business information in seconds – by simply asking a self-hosted AI chatbot. 

Apiko AI Assistant

As a result, our AI chatbot significantly simplified the estimators’ workflow and allowed the company to produce faster estimations and submit winning bids. 

“We worked under tight schedule and Apiko delivered as promised. They were a dedicated and passionate team - very resourceful.”
Kan, SpawGlass, Construction Company
Kan Phaobunjong
 
 
 

AI sound recognition

AI sound recognition is one of the most promising technologies. While sound recognition software has existed for a long time, it used fixed, rule-based approaches that are less flexible and can only work to recognize clear sound patterns. AI sound recognition, on the other hand, uses machine learning to adaptively learn and recognize complex sound patterns. 

In 2024, we started working on an AI sound recognition project focused on security. Currently, we are working on training a model that can recognize markers of dangerous situations, such as people's screams, yells for help, breaking windows, and gunshot sounds. When implemented, the system will issue alerts and trigger appropriate actions after recognizing a dangerous situation. 

In the future, we also plan to work on a transportation security project, developing a machine learning model that detects car crashes, tire bursts, door slams, honking horns, and other emergency sounds. 

AI for project management

Hive is our long-standing client and a leading project management platform for SaaS. In 2024, we developed and integrated an AI helper called Buzz into the product. 

Some of the tasks Buzz does for the users include: 

  • Creating and managing projects. By simply asking a chatbot, users can create a project and add initial tasks. The bot can schedule activities and even suggest the tasks on its own. 
  • E-mail management. Buzz can automatically “read” and archives unimportant emails. It can also help the user with generating email topics and texts. 
  • Creating content. Buzz can create various types of content, such as images, step-by-step plans, and instructions. 

This AI functionality makes user experience even more intuitive and allows Hive’s users to streamline routine project management tasks. 

AI for project management

“We worked with Apiko, a web and mobile app development company that helped staff an incredible offshore team. Without this team, Hive wouldn’t be where it is today.”
Eric Tupaldos, CTO at Hive, Productivity Platform
Eric Typaldos
CEO and Cofounder of Hive
 
 

AI for visual recognition

In 2024, we also worked with Ageras – a European fintech platform (#3 in Denmark) that enables users to manage accounting and tax-related tasks. Ageras uses AI for Optical Character Recognition to identify key data (name, address, cost of purchase) from physical bills. Later, it auto-pastes this information into necessary forms, like tax reports or invoices. 

This AI integration simplified paperwork for Ageras’ clients and allowed them to complete their tasks faster. 

AI for OCR

AI and cybersecurity 

Since summer 2023, we have been working on an AI cybersecurity project with Lanai, an AI governance startup. 

Apiko x Lanai AI Cybersecurity

Our team has developed a browser extension that collects information on employees’ interactions with various Generative AI apps. The extension registers what information they input and the app’s output. In this way, it allows organizations to prevent leaks of sensitive information and helps to control the use of AI without banning it entirely. 

Wrapping up 

2024 was an exciting year for AI, and AI innovations are not going to stop there. As an AI software development company, we are excited to move forward with our AI projects and keep exploring new frontiers. If you have an AI project or idea you'd like to bring to life, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us today to see how we can turn your vision into reality.