WINNING BIG

Mike Maynard, Napier Partnership Limited: Podcast Marketing Package

Mike Maynard, chairman of Napier and one of our longtime Business Intelligence Group judges, ran over a thousand prompts through four different AI engines to see what actually gets a B2B brand cited. Turns out the old SEO playbook is only half the story now. He walked Russ Fordyce through what Napier found, and honestly, some of it will surprise you.

Why Data Protection Has to Be Built In, Not Bolted On

Sanjay Castelino, President of Skyhigh Security, joined the Winners' Circle to talk about why so many companies still treat data protection as an afterthought instead of a design principle. It is a timely conversation, especially with shadow AI risk climbing inside nearly every enterprise right now, and Skyhigh just took home a 2026 Fortress Cybersecurity Award for Data Protection because of it.

Why the Best IT Professionals Become Award Judges — and What They See That You Can’t

After two decades delivering IT services across more than twenty clients, Sandeep Rachapudi found a way to give back that also keeps him sharp. He judges six BIG award programs and brings a rare, cross-industry lens to every nomination he scores. Here’s what he’s learned — and why it matters for anyone trying to get noticed beyond their own organization.

Why Enterprise AI Security Is Failing, and What the Best Companies Are Getting Right

Harshit Kohli, Senior Technical Account Manager at Amazon Web Services and BIG 2025 All-Star Judge, has spent his career at the intersection of cloud, streaming analytics, and AI. In this conversation, he breaks down the real threat landscape facing enterprises deploying AI today, from shadow AI to agent hijacking, and explains why the principle of least privilege is still the most underrated security strategy in the business.

Why Your Privacy, Security, and AI Teams Are Fighting Each Other—and How to Fix It

Most companies treat data privacy, cybersecurity, and AI governance as three separate headaches. Amy Worley of BRG wrote the book on why that approach is costing businesses real money—and what to do instead. Her Confidence by Design framework is already changing how boards and CEOs think about digital trust as a competitive advantage.

The Bar Complaint That Launched a Legal Tech Company — and What Matt Spiegel Learned About Building Culture the Second Time Around

Matt Spiegel started Lawmatics after a bar complaint taught him that lawyers were terrible at following up with clients. A decade and one successful exit later, he’s running one of legal tech’s most intentional companies — a Best Places to Work winner that keeps its team in the office three days a week and builds every product feature from customer problems, not feature requests.

What Judging Hundreds of IT Award Nominations Taught One Engineer About AI and Burnout

Sasibhushan Rao Chanthati, Senior Software Engineer at Hirekeyz and a two time BIG All Star Judge for Information Technology, joined the Winners' Circle to talk about what hundreds of IT award nominations have taught him, plus his own original research into detecting IT burnout with AI.

Why Post-Quantum Security Is an Architecture Problem, Not a Math Problem

Adversaries are quietly recording encrypted data today and simply waiting for quantum computers strong enough to crack it open. Fortress Cybersecurity Award winner Eddy Zervigon of Quantum XChange explains why the real fix is architecture rather than math, why crypto agility beats algorithm lock-in, and where smart security leaders should honestly start right now.

How Atlantic.Net Upgraded Support From the Inside Out and Strengthened Customer Trust

Atlantic.Net’s Director of Support Services, Chris Shyrock, inherited a team in the middle of a massive data center migration and turned it into a Transformation of the Year. Here’s the operational playbook behind a support overhaul that actually moved the Trustpilot needle, shifted queue ownership to shift leads, and kept customer impact at zero through one of the riskiest infrastructure moves in the company’s 32-year history.

Why Incidents Are Inevitable But the Chaos Doesn’t Have to Be

When a cyberattack hits, most organizations have tools to detect it and contain it -- but almost none have a system to govern the response across legal, communications, IT, and the C-suite at the same time. Stephen Garcia, the new CISO at BreachRx, spent two decades living that gap at some of the world’s most scrutinized companies. Now he’s on the other side, and the difference is striking.

How Smart PR Teams Use Third-Party Validation to Shorten the Sales Cycle

The PR teams building the most strategic client relationships have figured out how to connect recognition to revenue. Here is exactly where in the B2B sales cycle third-party validation does its most important work.

The Difference Between an Award That Generates Coverage and One That Doesn't

The B2B awards landscape includes genuinely rigorous programs that move needles and pay-to-play schemes that sophisticated buyers can see through immediately. Here is how to tell them apart before you commit your client's resources.

Awards Are Not Vanity Metrics. Here Is How to Prove It to Your CFO.

Finance is skeptical of award budgets, and vague arguments about brand building will not move them. Here is the trust funnel framing and the specific metrics that actually work when you need to justify the investment.

Why Your Client's Award Win Is Being Wasted (And How to Fix It)

Your client wins a meaningful award. The CEO posts on LinkedIn. 47 people like it. Two weeks later it is invisible. Here is exactly why this keeps happening and the activation system that actually changes what a recognition credential can do.

How to Turn One Award Win Into Six Months of Marketing Content

Most companies treat a B2B award win like a single announcement event. The ones generating real return treat it as a content foundation they build on for the next six months. Here is the four-layer system they use.

The Award Announcement Press Release Template That Actually Gets Picked Up

Most award announcement press releases get filed and ignored. The ones that generate real coverage make a handful of very specific choices that most communicators overlook. Here is the template that actually works.

Why the Best PR Professionals Build Awards Into Their Clients' Content Calendar

Most PR teams treat awards as events: you submit, you win, you announce, you move on. The practitioners generating the most value for clients figured out something different. Here is how they think about it and what they do instead.

The Real ROI of a B2B Award: What the Numbers Say One Year After Winning

The skepticism about B2B award ROI is usually right about what companies did with their recognition, and wrong about what recognition can do. Here is what the numbers actually say when activation is done properly.

Is Your Company Award-Worthy? Here Is How to Know Before You Submit

The question companies always ask is whether they are good enough to win. That is actually the wrong question. Here is the right one, and four honest assessments that tell you where your strongest case lives before you invest time in a nomination.

How to Write a Nomination That Actually Gets Read

The companies doing the best work do not always win the awards. The companies that win are the ones who figured out how to communicate what makes their work excellent to someone evaluating 30 submissions in a single session. Here is how they do it.

The B2B Companies That Never Win Awards Have One Thing in Common

Right now there are companies in your industry doing genuinely excellent work that basically nobody outside their existing customers knows about. Here is the one thing they have in common, and why it is costing them more than they realize.

What Happens After You Submit a Nomination: A Walk Through the Process

Most companies treat the nomination submission as the end of the process. It is actually just the beginning of a structured evaluation that most nominators never see. Here is exactly what happens from submission to notification.

The Nomination Is Not the Hard Part. Here Is What Actually Is.

The nomination process gets blamed for a lot of hesitation that actually belongs somewhere else. Here is an honest breakdown of what the nomination requires, what the real challenge is, and where the actual return on a recognition strategy lives.

Your Company Won Something This Year and Nobody Knows About It

Most B2B companies earn recognition and then do almost nothing with it. The trophy goes on a shelf, the press release goes out once, and everyone moves on. Here is why that gap exists and what it is actually costing you.

The Unexpected Career Benefit Nobody Talks About When They Sign Up to Judge

The visibility from judging is real but it is not the point. The professionals who keep coming back year after year have discovered something more valuable than a credential, and it has nothing to do with how their LinkedIn profile looks.

Meet the Judges: The Real Experts Behind the Recognition

Award credibility lives and dies with the people doing the evaluating. This series puts real names and real stories behind the judges who make our programs worth winning.

You Have Been in the Room. Now Help Decide Who Deserves to Be in It.

At a certain point in a career, the most valuable thing you can do is not acquire more experience. It is help define what good looks like for the next generation. Judging is how you do that.

What Makes a Nomination Stand Out to a Judge: An Honest Look From the Inside

Judges read dozens of nominations in a single session. Most of them are technically correct and completely forgettable. Here is an honest look at what actually separates the ones that stand out, straight from the people who do the evaluating.

Why the Most Influential People in B2B Are Also the Ones Giving Back as Judges

There is a pattern worth noticing among the most well-connected and respected people in B2B. They tend to be the same people who show up as judges, advisors, and mentors. Here is what that pattern actually tells us.

The Five-Minute Scoring Method Top Judges Use to Stay Consistent

Score drift is the silent killer of fair award evaluation. The best judges know how to avoid it with a surprisingly simple approach that takes about five minutes to set up and saves hours of second-guessing later.

What Judging a B2B Award Actually Taught Me About My Own Industry

Most people say yes to judging because it looks good on a bio. What they do not expect is how much it actually changes how they think about their own work. Here is an honest look at what the experience really teaches you.

The Companies Getting Employee Public Participation Right (And Why That Matters More Than You Think)

Most companies are sitting on an untapped resource: employees who want to share their expertise publicly but feel nervous about crossing invisible lines. The organizations getting it right have figured out that a clear, permission-by-default policy changes everything. Here is a look at the companies that are actually doing this well, and what everyone else can learn from them.

How SysAid Went from a 68 to a 93 CSAT by Building a Truly Agentic Organization

SysAid CEO Avi Kedmi didn’t just talk about AI transformation—he actually did it, taking the company’s CSAT from 68 to 93 and slashing detractors by 94%. In this episode of The Winners’ Circle, Kedmi walks through the two infrastructure strategies that made it possible, the human-first mindset his team kept throughout, and why he believes the limit of AI is now simply your own imagination.

Zero Knowledge Authentication and the Agentic AI Trust Layer: How Badge Inc. Is Securing the Future

The password era is, basically, already over—Badge Inc. just made it official. Dr. Tina Srivastava co-founded Badge after a national security breach exposed millions of stored fingerprints, including her own. Now her company’s zero-knowledge approach is quietly becoming the trust infrastructure for agentic AI, embedded inside platforms like CyberArk, Thales, and Cisco Duo.

How SymphonyAI’s Eureka Platform Is Making Enterprise AI Actually Work

SymphonyAI’s Eureka AI platform is basically rewriting the rules on what enterprise AI deployment can actually look like. Instead of spending the better part of a year training models from scratch, Eureka arrives pre-loaded with industry-specific knowledge, agents, and governance baked in from day one. It is a pretty fascinating look at what operational AI at real scale can do.

Why Hackers Go After Your IT Team Before Your CEO

Hackers rarely brute force their way in anymore. They buy your employees' personal details from data brokers, then let AI do the talking. Paul Mander of Optery, a 2026 Fortress Cybersecurity Award winner, explains why IT and finance teams get targeted before the CEO, and how removing exposed data shrinks the attack surface that social engineering depends on.

How HRW Built AI Avatars to Simulate Doctor-Patient Consultations

What if you could study the doctor patient conversation without ever stepping into a real exam room? HRW figured out how, building interactive AI avatars that play both sides of the consultation for pharma research. Here is how a self funded experiment, plenty of weird bugs, and a very honest reveal earned the team a 2026 AI Excellence Award.

AI Is Only as Good as the Data It Plugs Into: Inside PAR Technology’s Bet on Context Equity

PAR Technology just picked up a BIG Innovation Award, and Oli Ostertag pulled back the curtain on what makes Coach AI actually work. It turns out the hard part is not the AI. It is the data underneath it, which they call context equity, and the difference is sort of everything in a 3.6x performance gap.

Why Hyper‑Vertical AI Is Transforming Life Sciences Commercial Analytics

Pharma commercial analytics has been stuck in people-heavy consulting for decades. CustomerInsights.AI is rewriting the playbook with a hyper-vertical agentic AI platform that ingests, models, and surfaces insights at enterprise scale. Early customers are seeing 50 to 60 percent cost reductions and meaningful revenue lift.

Why Whatfix Bet Its Roadmap on Making Software Adapt to People

Whatfix did something most software companies only talk about. It ran its own tools on its own teams and the numbers got a little ridiculous. Here is how a 99.9% CSAT score, two years of zero attrition, and a philosophy called userization earned Khadim Batti and Whatfix a 2026 Excellence in Customer Service Award.

How Compass Digital Built AI That Frontline Hospital Workers Actually Want

Hospital meal trays are basically a patient safety device, not just dinner. Compass Digital built a computer vision system that checks every single one, and it actually speeds delivery up rather than slowing it down. The result is fewer errors, warmer food, and frontline staff who genuinely like the tool.

Why People Still Win in a Commoditized Industry: Inside Basys’ Service Edge

Most payment processors compete on price and pretty much nothing else. Basys took a different route, basically betting on people, live phone support, and a careful blend of AI. The result is a top-five-percent NPS and partners who stick around for the long haul.

Welocalize's Opal Tames the Content Tsunami With AI That Actually Sounds Like Your Brand

Welocalize's Opal platform just won the 2026 AI Excellence Award, and the story behind the win is wilder than the badge suggests. Paul Danter, GM at Welocalize, breaks down how the team is solving the content tsunami problem, scoring quality before the edit happens, and giving brands a way to sound like themselves in 200 languages. So here is the playbook.

How AI Native Learning Is Closing the Gap Between Knowing and Doing at Work

Most workplace training fades within days of the session ending, and the cost of that gap is huge. WalkMe is rethinking the whole model with an AI native learning platform that lives inside the apps employees actually use. Here is how Learning Arc is reshaping L&D for enterprise teams.

Why Bankruptcy Needs Domain-Specific AI, Not Another Chatbot

Bankruptcy is basically a paperwork mountain almost no one outside the courts can read. Stretto’s Robert Klamser is honestly rewriting that story by training AI on every nuance of the federal code. The result is a tool that just answers real questions for real people, in plain language, immediately.

How Dassault Systèmes 3DLIVE Turned the Virtual Twin Into a Hands-On Experience

Dassault Systèmes just earned the BIG Innovation Award for 3DLIVE, the app that lets engineers, executives and even surgeons step inside a virtual twin through Apple Vision Pro. From F1 wheel assemblies to living hearts, the team has rewritten what hands-on product design feels like, and Jim Napolitano walks through what's actually different here.

Planner 5D Brings Spatial AI to the Smartest Home in History

Most apps stop at a pretty render. Planner 5D actually rebuilds your room. The 2026 AI Excellence Award winner is using spatial reconstruction on regular phones to create editable digital twins, basically turning every renovation into a software problem instead of a measuring-tape problem.

When the World's Most Conservative Companies Bet Everything on AI

What happens when the most risk-averse enterprises become the most aggressive AI adopters? Anton Dam, SVP of Product AI at Optro, is watching it happen in real time. His company is helping half the Fortune 500 turn internal audit from a reactive compliance function into a genuine strategic advantage — and the secret is something you might not expect.

Why AI Training Data Integrity Is the Cybersecurity Blind Spot Nobody Is Talking About

Most AI teams obsess over model performance and infrastructure, yet a quieter risk hides inside the human data layer. Siobhan Hanna, SVP and General Manager of Welo Data, just won an AI Excellence Award for NEMO, the framework her team built to spot fraud before it ever touches a training set. Here is why it matters for every founder, operator, and AI leader right now.

Only 1% of Enterprises Are Ready for Agent-to-Agent. That's About to Be a Problem.

Most major companies still run on 1980s IVR technology, and a new wave of voice AI is coming faster than anyone expected. Parloa CMO Latane Conant breaks down why only 1% of enterprises are ready for the agent-to-agent future, and what it really takes to fix the broken front door of customer service.

First Mover in the Second Wave: How Miso Robotics' Flippy Quietly Became the Survivor of Restaurant Automation

In this episode of The Winners' Circle, Rich Hull Miso Robotics breaks down why Flippy survived the brutal first wave of food robotics startups, what changed when the third generation shrank to half the size at twice the speed, and why the labor crisis in restaurants is creating a brand new pool of applicants who would never have applied for a kitchen job.

The GPS for Modernization: How Publicis Sapient Is Finally Solving the Legacy Code Problem

In this episode of The Winners' Circle, <a href="https://in.linkedin.com/in/rakeshravuri">Rakesh Ravuri</a>, CTO of <a href="https://www.publicissapient.com/">Publicis Sapient</a>, breaks down how Sapient Slingshot is finally cracking the decades-old legacy code problem. He shares why most AI coding tools fail at the enterprise level, how an enterprise context graph changes everything, and what CIOs sitting on millions of lines of COBOL should actually do next.

AI Beyond Insights: How Reclaim Health Is Actually Putting Money Back in Your Pocket

Nataly Youssef, CEO and Founder of Reclaim Health, joins the Winners' Circle to discuss how their AI Excellence Award winning platform automatically recovers healthcare dollars that employers and employees are already entitled to but never receive. She explains why AI should do work for people rather than create more work, and how Reclaim turns insights into actual dollars recovered.

The End of Shoes Following You Around the Internet: How Contextual AI Is Fixing Digital Advertising

Kartal Goksel, CTO of Seedtag, joins the Winners' Circle to discuss how their AI Excellence Award winning Liz AI is transforming digital advertising through neuro-contextual targeting. He explains why ads that match the moment you are in actually resonate with your brain rather than creating that cognitive friction we have all learned to ignore.

Breaking the Grid Bottleneck: How Battery-Integrated Chargers Are Accelerating EV Infrastructure

The grid is the bottleneck. Not the cars, not the technology, not even the capital. Alex Urist, co-founder of XCHARGE North America, has spent years watching promising EV charging projects stall for 52 to 72 weeks waiting for transformer drops. His company built a solution: battery-integrated DC fast chargers that bypass the queue and get charging infrastructure deployed in three months.

How Enterprise AI Innovation Conquered Highly Regulated Industries in 2026

The 2026 We Love Tech Awards just wrapped, and the winners came from places nobody expected to lead on AI: hospitals, banks, government, and the world's biggest consulting firms. Co-host Evan Kirstel and Russ Fordyce break down the EY scale story, the rise of "token maxing," and why trust is now the defining AI competency. Real winners, real ROI, real workflows.

Augmented Intelligence in Healthcare: How Sagility's Nurse Assist Is Transforming Prior Authorization

Healthcare is highly regulated, deeply complex, and running on legacy systems built over decades. Yet the prior authorization process cannot wait. Madan Moudgal, Chief Digital Officer at Sagility, has spent nearly 40 years at the intersection of technology and healthcare. His team built Nurse Assist, an AI solution that cuts clinical review time in half while ensuring humans remain in control of every critical decision.

Creating the Wow Experience: How SysAid Blends AI and Human Touch in Customer Support

When a customer tells you that your support department gave them a "wow experience," you frame that quote and share it with your entire team. That is exactly what Asaf Goldstein, Senior Director of Global Customer Care at SysAid, did. The company has spent 25 years in IT service management, but the last few years have transformed how they deliver support by blending AI capabilities with irreplaceable human empathy.

You Can't Fake Life: How Verifast Is Solving the Trust Problem in Rental Housing

Credit scores measure your propensity to pay based on history. They say nothing about your actual ability to pay right now. That distinction matters enormously for the roughly 45 million Americans who are credit invisible or unscorable, including immigrants, recent graduates, and anyone who grew up in a cash economy. Tim Ray, Co-Founder and CEO of Verifast, is building AI-powered identity and income verification that lets these financially solid people prove who they are and what they can actually afford.

Building a C-3PO for Your Spend: How SIB Is Transforming Procurement with Private AI

Most companies have not done a top-to-bottom audit of their spend in over 15 years. Shannon Copeland, CEO of SIB, is changing that with SpendBrain, an AI platform that builds private semantic ontologies for each client. The system catches invoice errors, identifies savings opportunities, and eventually learns to proactively surface problems before anyone asks, all while keeping data completely walled off from everyone, including SIB itself.

Why Chasing Stolen Cars Was Always the Wrong Strategy

The automotive security industry spent decades selling tracking devices that chase stolen cars. Titan Secure won by recognizing that's backwards - stop the theft before the vehicle moves and you save customers from catastrophic loss, emotional trauma, and thousands in out-of-pocket costs insurance won't cover.

The Process Nobody Prepares For: How EstateExec Is Modernizing Estate Settlement

Everybody dies, and somebody has to deal with the aftermath. Dan Stickel built EstateExec after serving as executor for both his parents' estates and discovering that even his Harvard degrees and CEO experience did not prepare him for the confusion. The company has pioneered AI-powered estate settlement software that provides step-by-step guidance customized to your state, your jurisdiction, and your specific situation.

How QuickFi is Fixing Small Business Lending By Putting It Where It Actually Belongs

QuickFi just won the 2026 BIG Innovation Awards for something pretty remarkable: making it so small businesses can actually get equipment financing without wanting to tear their hair out. Their embedded lending platform is changing how 33 million American small businesses access the capital they desperately need.

How Winning Business Awards Transforms Employee Morale and Retention

Most companies think about awards as a PR tool. The ones that really get it understand that winning an award does something just as important inside the building. This post looks at the research connecting external recognition to employee morale, retention, and the kind of culture that makes people actually want to stay.

Business Awards vs. Rankings: Which One Actually Wins for PR and Brand Reputation?

There is actually a real debate in PR circles about whether rankings or business awards do more for your brand. This post breaks down how each option works, what the data says about brand reputation impact, and why more smart marketing teams are leaning one direction. Spoiler: third-party credibility matters more than ever right now.

Quality First: How HaystackID® Built AI for eDiscovery Without Cutting Corners

Most companies treat AI like an easy button. HaystackID® treats it like a precision instrument. Aaron Pribil abd Todd Haley have spent five years testing AI systems in eDiscovery before rolling them out to clients. Their approach prioritizes quality over speed, governance over shortcuts, and validation over assumptions. The result is 90%+ recall rates and 60-70% time savings for legal teams handling massive document reviews.

The Content Explosion Meets Global Scale: How Vistatec Combines AI and Human Expertise

The content explosion is real, and global brands are struggling to keep up. Vistatec has spent 30 years helping the world's largest companies localize content, and now their AI powered platform orchestrates humans and machines to process tens of thousands of jobs weekly across 250 languages. CMO Simon Hodgkins explains why AI alone cannot maintain brand trust and why the vendor relationship has fundamentally changed from provider to integrator.

The Real ROI of Business Awards: What It Costs and What You Get Back

Entering a business award is an investment, and your CFO is going to ask what you got for it. This post breaks down the real costs to apply, walks through recognition ROI case studies from US companies, and gives you a framework to make the numbers work in your favor before you ever submit a nomination.

How Casca Slashed Small Business Loan Approvals From 90 Days To 3 Weeks

Lukas Haffer built Casca to automate small business lending for banks, transforming 90-day loan approvals into three-week decisions and helping America's 33 million small businesses escape predatory lenders charging over 100% APR.

Lead People, Manage Projects: The Transformative Leadership of Lori Tompos

Lori Tompos, Herizon Award winner, West Point graduate, Desert Storm veteran, and founder of Avail Consulting, has built her career around a powerful leadership principle: lead people, manage projects. In this Winner’s Circle feature, she explains why micromanagement damages trust, why people leave managers more often than jobs, and how leaders can build stronger teams through competency, confidence, and compassion. The article explores Lori’s journey from mastering the Patriot missile system during Desert Storm to helping organizations develop better communicators and more human-centered leaders. It also covers the growing importance of empathy, critical thinking, psychological safety, and high human skills as AI reshapes the modern workplace.

What Is the ROI of an Employee Recognition Program? Your Complete Guide to Costs, Returns, and Making It Work

Building the business case for an employee recognition program is harder than it should be. This post does the work for you - covering realistic setup costs, the research on what recognition programs actually return, and practical moves to get the most out of every dollar you invest in appreciating your people.

Democratizing Great Communication: How Prezent Is Transforming Life Sciences Presentations

Almost everybody creates presentations, but very few people are good at it. Vikram Venugopal, SVP at Prezent, has spent decades teaching life sciences teams how to communicate effectively, and now his company serves 45 of the top 50 pharma companies with an AI native platform that understands the difference between a clinical trial chart and a sales graph. The mission is simple: democratize great business communication so that drugs get to patients faster.

9 Practical Ways to Turn Good Work Into an Award-Worthy Entry

So, this piece breaks down what strong entries actually do well, from proof and structure to supporting files and internal prep. In fact, it is built for busy marketers and agency teams that want better odds without wasting weeks on a shaky nomination, and it gives them a repeatable framework they can reuse across programs.

The $80 Billion Barrier Most Marketers Are Ignoring

Steve Rotter is on his fourth CMO role, this time at DeepL, and he says language is the barrier most companies are still ignoring. On The Winners' Circle, he breaks down why specialized AI models beat general-purpose ones by a wide margin, how 44,000 blind tests prove it, and what a truly borderless business looks like when translation is no longer the bottleneck.

The AI Platform That Finally Answers: Did You Get a Good Deal?

Infinity Loop has built something procurement teams have actually wanted for years: an AI platform that answers the fundamental question of whether you got a good deal or not. By training machine learning on real negotiation outcomes across industries, the platform scores every contract, identifies savings opportunities, and provides specific strategies with benchmark data, saving procurement managers 80 to 90 percent of their prep time.

Rethinking Pharma Marketing: How EVERSANA Built an 80/20 AI Model That Actually Works

EVERSANA has completely rethought pharmaceutical marketing by building an AI platform that targets 80 percent automation with 20 percent human expertise for high value decisions. What used to take months and involve 50 to 60 people touching a project now happens in weeks with 5 to 10 specialists, delivering 30 percent cost savings while actually enabling personalization that pharma compliance has historically made impossible.

How ACM Research Is Cutting Semiconductor Waste By 50% To Feed The AI Chip Boom

Jim Straus at ACM Research is betting big on bringing semiconductor manufacturing home to American soil after watching his company grow revenue by a staggering 50% year-over-year for the past six or seven years. The AI boom is driving what industry analysts are calling an unprecedented "giga cycle" in semiconductor demand and the ACM team are pioneering panel-level packaging technology that eliminates the massive waste inherent in traditional round wafer processing by switching to square panels, achieving up to 50% cost reductions while meeting the insatiable demand for AI chips that now represent nearly half of all global semiconductor revenue.

Why Your Best Marketing Move Might Be Spending Less on Google and Meta

Amol Waishampayan has been building Full Throttle AI since 2018, long before AI became a buzzword, and he has a pretty clear-eyed view of where most mid-market advertisers are getting it wrong. On The Winners' Circle, he walks through household-level identity, why spending less on paid search can actually improve your paid search results, and what the difference between AI-enabled and AI-powered really means for your tech stack.

Inside the Innovation Machine: How Axalta Delivers No Compromise Sustainability

Axalta Coating Systems has built what CTO Dr. Robert Roop calls an innovation machine, winning a historic six BIG Innovation Awards in a single year. The 160 year old coatings leader proves that performance and sustainability are not at odds, with products that reduce energy use, emissions and waste while simultaneously improving performance, durability and aesthetics.

What Judges Really Look For in Award Nominations

So, this post shows what judges actually notice when they score a nomination, and why polished language alone never carries the day. In fact, it is built for marketing leaders and agency teams that want to write for the scorecard, not for internal applause, with sharper proof, cleaner structure, and stronger trust signals.

Best Practices for Building an Award Application Plan That Actually Works

So, this post walks through the planning side of awards, from picking the right categories to building a timeline that your team can actually manage. In fact, it is meant for marketers and PR teams that want a repeatable system, not a panic sprint, and it shows how one submission can feed broader content and credibility goals.

10 Smart Moves That Make Award Applications More Likely to Win

So, this article covers the internal and external tactics that make submissions stronger before they ever hit the judging queue. In fact, it is a practical guide for teams that want steadier wins and fewer last-minute surprises, with advice on customer proof, metrics, editing discipline, and turning each nomination into durable third-party validation.

The Transformation Company That Transformed Itself: Inside Bizzdesign's Three-Way Merger

Most transformations fail at the start. Nick Reed of Bizzdesign has seen it happen repeatedly: organizations spend months trying to find the data needed to plan the initiative, stakeholders leave workshops thinking they are aligned when they are not, and unforeseen dependencies surface that blow up business cases. His company just completed a three-way merger of competitors, tripling in size while running a transformation business. The irony is not lost on him.

How BDO Saved a Million Hours With AI (And Why They're Just Getting Started)

When BDO's RAID team set out to bring AI into one of America's largest accounting firms, they didn't start with a product. They started with a conversation. Zak Fay and his crew of ferocious learners built nine robust, purpose-built solutions in under a year, and supported BDO’s enterprise AI tools that saved over a million hours, and got over halfof the firm using AI every week. Here's how they did it without losing the human in the equation.

Why Most Companies Are Just Clicking a Button and Hoping Their AI Chatbot Is Secure

Most companies click a button in their cloud provider hoping their AI chatbot is secure. Fuel iX won by recognizing red team security testing cannot scale when expert availability lags behind daily AI application launches - so they automated comprehensive vulnerability detection with AI that identifies risks human testers miss.

How to Improve Your Chances of Winning Industry Awards Without Resorting to Hype

So, this piece is about improving your odds, not gaming the process. In fact, it shows how stronger planning, proof, and positioning can make your next entry easier to judge and much harder to ignore, with practical moves that help teams turn good work into credible recognition and reusable market proof.

The AI Sales Agent That Learned to Sell Like the Best Humans

Humara has actually cracked the code on AI sales by studying how the best human salespeople perform and then training virtual agents to mirror those exact techniques. The company is seeing conversion rates up to 23 percent and customers adding 24 percent more products per transaction, proving that the art of selling can indeed be taught to machines when you really understand the psychology behind it.

How AI Call Analytics Is Transforming the Way Car Dealerships Sell and Serve

BIG Innovation Award winner CallRevu has transformed automotive sales by bringing AI-powered call analytics to over 6,000 dealerships across North America. CEO Ben Chodor explains how analyzing 400 million calls annually helps dealers discover their blind spots, train employees through AI simulation, and ultimately sell more cars while improving customer retention.

How WEX Is Transforming Healthcare Claims from Weeks to Seconds with AI

WEX has actually revolutionized the often frustrating FSA claims reimbursement process through innovative AI technology. Senior Vice President Prashant Desale shares how his team built an end-to-end solution in just little over six months that validates claims in seconds rather than weeks, all while maintaining the accuracy and trust that regulated industries require.

Where Dirt Meets AI: Inside the Construction Revolution Powering Data Centers

Aligned Data Centers is building the physical foundation of the AI revolution across four Phoenix campuses. Construction leader Alex Walker reveals how flexibility in design, early partner collaboration, and the pivot to liquid cooling are actually reshaping how data centers get built in a market where bigger and faster are really the only constants.

Voice Screening: The Future of Fraud Detection in Financial Services

Voice screening is emerging as a powerful new approach to fraud detection in financial services, offering a faster, more accurate alternative to traditional verification methods. In this blog, Scott Moore of Clearspeed explains how the company’s technology measures involuntary neurophysiological responses in a person’s voice to assess risk in real time—requiring just milliseconds of audio. Unlike conventional AI or pattern-based systems, Clearspeed’s approach avoids bias by focusing solely on biological reactions rather than personal data or historical trends. With validated accuracy rates as high as 97%, the technology enables organizations to quickly clear low-risk cases while focusing resources on higher-risk ones. Originally developed for military use, voice screening is now being applied across insurance, banking, and government sectors. While the technology delivers significant ROI and efficiency gains, Moore highlights that the real challenge lies in rethinking legacy processes to fully leverage its capabilities. As fraud grows more sophisticated, voice-based risk assessment offers a scalable path toward faster, fairer, and more trustworthy verification.

Beyond the Hype: How 50 Billion Intent Signals Per Week Are Actually Making ABM Work

Account-based marketing has long promised precision, but execution has lagged behind the reality of complex B2B buying groups. With 5 to 15 stakeholders influencing decisions, marketers need more than strategy. They need actionable intelligence. This blog explores how Anteriad, led by VP of Product Anna Nielsen, is turning 50 billion weekly intent signals into real results. By combining intent data, firmographics, and AI, marketers can identify who is in market, prioritize accounts, and engage buying groups with relevant messaging across channels. From full-funnel orchestration to AI-driven personalization and faster reporting, the piece breaks down what actually works versus what is hype. The takeaway is simple but powerful. Better data and smarter execution lead to better customer experiences, stronger engagement, and ABM that finally delivers at scale.

Why Your Executive's Home WiFi is Your Company's Biggest Security Gap

Corporations spend billions protecting executives at work, then allow them to go home to WiFi networks with default or unchanged passwords that have been shared with dozens of neighbors and friends. BlackCloak won Product of the Year by building the first comprehensive Digital Executive Protection Platform that actually secures “the other 12 hours” of the family's day.

How to Turn Field Techs into AI-Powered Problem Solvers

Joshua Turiano and his team at Blue Stream Fiber deployed AI across their entire telecom operation, cutting support times and empowering employees with instant network intelligence. This is what practical AI implementation actually looks like in the field.

What the 2026 Best Places to Work Data Tells Us About Employee Sentiment

The 2026 Best Places to Work benchmark data is in, and the story is more nuanced than the headlines suggest. Scores held nearly flat, compensation concerns dominated open feedback, and retention signals quietly improved across the board. If you manage people, market to employers, or advise HR teams, this data is worth understanding.

From Engineering to Enterprise: How AI Partnerships Are Reshaping High-Performance Computing

This feature follows Samantha Clarke’s journey from hands-on engineering in New Zealand to leading global AI partnerships at VDURA. Clarke—recently honored with a 2025 Herizon Award—explains how the engineering mindset translates perfectly into partnership strategy, systems thinking, and relationship-led growth. She reveals why AI and HPC are now inseparable, how co-creation is replacing traditional sales models, and why the human element still anchors an accelerating AI world. Packed with insight on scaling through ecosystems, cloud-first experimentation, and mentoring women in tech, this story is a must‑read for anyone building the future of enterprise AI.

How Real Estate Firms Are Finally Making Data Actually Work With AI Agents

Real estate data was basically a nightmare until companies like Cherre started connecting everything together. Now with AI agents, that connected data is actually becoming something remarkable - turning weeks of analysis into minutes of insight.

The HIPAA-Compliant Cloud Crisis Nobody's Talking About (And How One Company Cracked It)

Marty Puranik's Atlantic.Net just won the 2026 BIG Innovation Awards for building the infrastructure healthcare needs to deploy AI securely. With 31 years in the game, they're solving the hardest problem in the industry: how to run cutting-edge AI while staying HIPAA compliant.

How AI Turned Customer Analytics From a Weeks-Long Manual Effort Into Instant Insights and Proven CX Outcomes

Want to know why some companies are winning at AI-driven customer experience while others struggle? Daniel Ziv, global VP, AI and analytics from Verint shares how AI is transforming call center analytics from a weeks-long slog into instant insights. The secret isn't just the AI models everyone can access, it's your unique behavioral data that creates an unbeatable competitive advantage.

The Invisible Infrastructure Problem Burning Out Healthcare Teams

Healthcare documentation is treated like an administrative afterthought until something goes catastrophically wrong. Simplify Healthcare’s Simplify Docs™ won Product of the Year by recognizing this invisible infrastructure problem and building AI that automates the entire lifecycle - from regulations to translations to compliance.