--- title: "AI and Vertical Software: What Are We Actually Seeing?" description: Test blog post. image: https://harrisinternational.com/hubfs/ChatGPT%20Image%208.%20Sept.%202026%2c%2010_24_53.png --- [Skip to the main content.](https://harrisinternational.com/news/ai-and-vertical-software-what-are-we-actually-seeing#main-content) [![Harris International Group](https://harrisinternational.com/hubfs/Harris-International-Group-Logo-White-1.svg "Harris International Group")](https://harrisinternational.com/?hsLang=en) [![Harris International Group](https://harrisinternational.com/hubfs/Harris-International-Group-Logo-FullColor-1.svg "Harris International Group")](https://harrisinternational.com/?hsLang=en) - [Home](https://harrisinternational.com) - [Acquisition Process](https://harrisinternational.com/acquisition) - [Portfolio](https://harrisinternational.com/portfolio) - [News](https://harrisinternational.com/news) - About - [About Us](https://harrisinternational.com/about-us) - [Leadership](https://harrisinternational.com/leadership) - [Careers](https://harrisinternational.com/careers) - [Contact](https://harrisinternational.com/contact) - [English](https://harrisinternational.com/news/ai-and-vertical-software-what-are-we-actually-seeing) - [Deutsch](https://harrisinternational.com/de/news/ai-und-vertikale-märkte-was-bringt-uns-das-wirklich) Search Toggle Menu - [English](https://harrisinternational.com/news/ai-and-vertical-software-what-are-we-actually-seeing) - [Deutsch](https://harrisinternational.com/de/news/ai-und-vertikale-märkte-was-bringt-uns-das-wirklich) Search Toggle Menu - [Home](https://harrisinternational.com) - [Acquisition Process](https://harrisinternational.com/acquisition) - [Portfolio](https://harrisinternational.com/portfolio) - [News](https://harrisinternational.com/news) - About - [About Us](https://harrisinternational.com/about-us) - [Leadership](https://harrisinternational.com/leadership) - [Careers](https://harrisinternational.com/careers) - [Contact](https://harrisinternational.com/contact) - Example Link - Example Link - Example Link [Facebook](https://harrisinternational.com/news/ai-and-vertical-software-what-are-we-actually-seeing#0) [Instagram](https://harrisinternational.com/news/ai-and-vertical-software-what-are-we-actually-seeing#0) [Linkedin](https://harrisinternational.com/news/ai-and-vertical-software-what-are-we-actually-seeing#0) [X](https://harrisinternational.com/news/ai-and-vertical-software-what-are-we-actually-seeing#0) [YouTube](https://harrisinternational.com/news/ai-and-vertical-software-what-are-we-actually-seeing#0) [Medium](https://harrisinternational.com/news/ai-and-vertical-software-what-are-we-actually-seeing#0) [← Back](https://harrisinternational.com/news?hsLang=en) 3 min read # AI and Vertical Software: What Are We Actually Seeing? [![Picture of Craig Millard](https://harrisinternational.com/hubfs/Craig%20Millard.jpg) Craig Millard](https://harrisinternational.com/news/author/craig-millard) : Sep 8, 2026, 4:25:56 AM [AI](https://harrisinternational.com/news/tag/ai) ![AI and Vertical Software: What Are We Actually Seeing?](https://harrisinternational.com/hubfs/ChatGPT%20Image%208.%20Sept.%202026%2c%2010_24_53.png) It is difficult to have a conversation about software today without talking about AI. And if you listen to some of the predictions, you might think every software business needs to reinvent itself immediately. Our experience is a different. Across vertical software businesses, we are seeing plenty of experimentation and development with AI – some very promising, some less so. But one thing is becoming clear: the most interesting opportunities are rarely about adding an AI button to an existing product or a chat bot to your website. They start with a much simpler question: **What does our customer still spend too much time doing manually?** That is where things get interesting, and the real value lies. **AI works particularly well where software, and the companies that make it, already understands the customer.** One of the things we have learned from working with vertical software businesses is just how much knowledge sits inside these companies. They understand very specific industries. They know their customers’ workflows, terminology, regulations, exceptions and, often, the little details that someone outside that industry would never think about. That matters enormously when it comes to AI. A general AI tool might be able to summarise a document or draft an email. But combine that capability with software that already understands the customer, their data and the process they are trying to complete, and suddenly it becomes a force multiplier. This is why we don't necessarily see AI reducing the importance of vertical software. In many cases, we think it will do the opposite, and these companies are in the best position to exploit the latest developments in AI. ### **What AI means at Harris** At Harris, we are already seeing businesses explore AI and automation in different ways, while sharing what works across the wider organisation. Our business units run their own markets, customers and roadmaps, and that independence is a large part of why they understand their verticals so well. But independent does not have to mean on your own. In Harris International we have a small team called Vanguard whose job is to expedite AI adoption across our business units - and to aim at a 10x change in savings, cost avoidance and revenue rather than a marginal one. They run month-long "disruptor" projects alongside a BU's own people: a product modernisation or re-write, a stubborn technical problem, a piece of customer co-creation, a new feature that has never quite reached the top of the roadmap. Any BU can apply, it costs them nothing, and the work is handed back for the business unit to own and take forward. The point is not to centralise AI. It is to give a business a running start, and then get out of the way. Project Wraith was the first of these. The challenge was to build a modern case management system in a month and push AI hard enough to find out whether the velocity claims were real. They were: one developer working with a set of AI agents, no hand-written code, over 1,600 automated tests, more than 60 technical and handover documents produced as the work went along, and around $650k of avoided development cost. The system was handed to the business unit's own development team, who have taken it on from there and onboarded their first customer 6 months later. What we learned mattered more than the software itself - specify the requirements, let AI implement, keep a human reviewing, document as you go - and that method is now being used elsewhere in the group. Which is the real advantage of being part of something bigger: a software business experimenting alone learns at the speed of its own experiments, while a business inside Harris learns at the speed of all of them. ### **From storing information to helping get the job done** For a long time, much of business software has essentially been a very sophisticated system of record. It tells us what happened, where something is in a process and what information we have. AI gives software the opportunity to become more active, and provide more value. A system of record ultimately can become a system of understanding. Instead of only showing a user a case, for example, the software might summarise it, identify what needs attention, suggest the next action(s) and prepare the response. The human is still in control, but much of the work around the decision disappears. For us, that is a far more interesting development than simply putting a chatbot into every application. **So, what should software companies do?** We don't think the answer is to suddenly become an AI company. Models will change. Technology will get cheaper. Today's impressive capability may be standard infrastructure surprisingly soon. The more durable questions are the ones vertical software companies have always been good at answering: **What problem does our customer really have? Where are they losing time? And what could we do to make their job easier?** AI simply gives us more ways to answer those questions. There will inevitably be plenty of hype, experiments that go nowhere and features customers don't actually need. But there will also be vertical software businesses that use AI to quietly remove hours of manual work, make complicated processes much simpler and solve problems that software could not realistically solve before. Those are the developments we find most interesting. Because ultimately, the AI opportunity in vertical software may not be about making the software look smarter. **It is about making the customer's job easier.** 4 min read #### [Selling your software business: the parts of the price nobody mentions in the first meeting](https://harrisinternational.com/news/selling-your-software-business-the-parts-of-the-price-nobody-mentions-in-the-first-meeting?hsLang=en) I have spent a fair chunk of my working life on the buy side of software deals, which means I am about to tell you a few things that do not obviously... 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