I recently read through an IDC research brief commissioned by Microsoft on what separates AI leaders from everyone else.

A lot of it confirmed things I’ve been thinking about for a while, and some of it pushed my thinking further. Here’s my take on what actually matters in it and what we’re doing about it at ForgeXRM.

What Struck Me Most About the IDC Frontier Firms Research

What stood out to me most is that AI is moving beyond experimentation into real business impact. The companies pulling ahead are not just using AI to save a little bit more time here and there. They’re using it as a real business strategy. That distinction is everything.

There’s a difference between adopting AI tools and building an AI-native operation. The first is relatively easy. The second requires you to rethink how your products are conceived, how your team works, and what your business is actually capable of producing. That’s a harder shift, but it’s the one that compounds over time.

We’ve embraced AI at ForgeXRM not as a feature to bolt on at the end, but as a mindset that should influence how products are imagined, designed, built, tested, documented, and delivered. I think that’s a big part of what separates the next generation of software companies from everyone else.

Why AI for Productivity Alone Has a Ceiling

A lot of organizations are still in what I’d call the productivity phase of AI, summarizing notes, drafting emails, helping people work a bit faster. That’s certainly useful. But it has a ceiling.

The IDC research makes this point clearly. Leading organizations are moving beyond individual productivity use cases into functional and industry-specific applications – AI that’s designed into the workflow itself rather than layered on top of it. That’s a fundamentally different kind of value. One saves you twenty minutes. The other changes what your business can do.

Generic AI can be useful. But the real opportunity comes from when AI is shaped around a company’s workflows, data, industry context, and customer experience. That’s where it becomes more strategic instead of tactical.

Why We Built ForgeXRM Foundry and What It Changed About How We Work

We created something internally called ForgeXRM Foundry. It’s our product development engine, and it’s where AI has become most deeply embedded in how we work.

Foundry is how we ideate faster, develop faster, iterate faster, and create more consistency around the full product lifecycle. We’re using AI to support brainstorming, requirements refinement, documentation, QA, regression testing, release management, and code documentation – things that are necessary but that pull a development team’s attention away from work that actually requires their expertise and judgment.

But what matters most to me about Foundry isn’t the efficiency gains, even though those are real. It’s that we’ve built a repeatable system for innovation. When your process for creating and improving software is itself AI-native, you’re not just shipping faster. You’re building an engine that gets better over time and produces more consistent, higher-quality output at every step. That’s one of the defining characteristics of what IDC calls a frontier firm.

Why We Build AI Into the Product, Not Just Behind It

This is where I think the biggest opportunity lives for the businesses we work with, and it’s something I want to be specific about.

Most of the current conversation about AI in business software focuses on what happens around the software – the assistant that helps you write a summary, the copilot that drafts a response. But the deeper opportunity is AI that’s built directly into the workflows inside the product itself.

Take BenefitsBridge, our CRM solution built for health insurance brokers on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. The workflows in that industry are complex – carrier relationships, commission tracking, renewal cycles, client communication. AI that’s designed into those specific workflows, pre-configured around the data a broker is actually working with at any given moment, is a completely different level of value than a generic assistant sitting alongside the software. It can surface the right insight at the right time, guide users through complex decisions, and enable intelligent actions without requiring the user to know how to prompt their way to an answer.

The same principle applies to our Wealth Management CRM, built for financial advisors and wealth management firms on the Microsoft platform. In a regulated, data-sensitive environment, AI that’s embedded thoughtfully into the workflow, with appropriate oversight and governance built in, is far more valuable than AI that’s available as a convenience feature. It helps advisors work more strategically, not just more quickly.

And with XRM Grid Control, our flexible data grid built alongside Power Platform, the opportunity is to give organizations and developers a configurable foundation they can extend with AI capabilities tailored to their own workflows and data. We’re building an AI toolkit into Grid so that users can interact with their data in ways that go well beyond what a standard grid experience offers.

The point across all of these is the same: we’re not thinking about AI as an add-on. It’s a core design principle. Organizations using our software can expand on what’s there, but we’re delivering with AI capabilities already built in, capabilities that allow for really bespoke types of actions needed within their specific organization. That’s a very different level of value than just using AI for convenience.

What Agentic AI Really Means and Why the Boss Agent Mindset Matters

The IDC research spends considerable time on agentic AI, and I think that’s the right place to be paying attention. Most organizations are still in the experimentation phase, but the direction is clear and it’s moving quickly. We’re moving toward systems that don’t just respond to prompts – they reason, plan, take action, and participate in workflows over time. And it’s so magical when you think about what’s possible.

The way I think about this internally is what I call the boss agent mindset. You need to be the boss agent. That’s the human oversight. The value isn’t in replacing human judgment,  it’s in amplifying it. If AI agents handle the coordination, the documentation, the routine steps of a process, then the people on your team become the strategic layer. Now you have apprentices and companions in your work effort where you can multiply your productivity ten times or more.

Inside Foundry, we’re continuing to build out our agentic AI capabilities, both for product development and for internal operations. I see a future where these capabilities help orchestrate steps around processes, reduce manual coordination, and improve execution speed – without losing the control, visibility, and accountability that businesses need.

Why AI Governance on the Microsoft Platform Isn’t the Obstacle But Part of the Work

One of the smartest points in the IDC content is that the companies furthest along in AI are not ignoring governance. In fact, they seem to understand the risks even more clearly. Security, privacy, compliance, transparency, and human oversight are not blockers to AI maturity. They’re really part of it.

That’s a foundational strategy for ForgeXRM. All of our intellectual property is built on top of or alongside Microsoft business applications and the Microsoft Cloud, which holds security, privacy, compliance, and transparency in the highest regard. For the industries we serve (insurance brokers, wealth management firms, professional services organizations) trust isn’t optional. When you’re working in regulated or data-sensitive environments, explainability matters and human oversight matters. Our customers get that foundation built in.

As we expand AI across our offerings, we’re not just thinking about what AI can do. We’re thinking about how it should be governed, how users stay in control, and how we can build responsibly on the Microsoft platform.

Where AI-First Software on Microsoft Is Really Going

My takeaway from the IDC research is pretty simple. The winners in this next phase of software won’t just adopt AI tools. They’ll redesign how they work and how they create value. They’ll move from generic capabilities to tailored experiences. And they’ll build organizations that are not only more productive, but more adaptive and more strategic.

That’s the path we’re on at ForgeXRM. We’re building with AI in mind, building with Microsoft in mind, and building with a belief that packaged, industry-aware software can become much more intelligent, much more proactive, and much more valuable in the years ahead.

Being AI-first is not about hype. It’s about readiness. It’s about strategy. It’s about building the right foundation so AI can actually scale and produce business value. That’s exactly what this new frontier era is really all about and I couldn’t be more curious and excited at the same time.

By Ryan Plourde, Founder and CEO, ForgeXRM, www.forgexrm.com

 

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