Published by Sue Johns-Chapman
Published Date 12.10.2026 
Sphere has been shortlisted for Standout AI Software Solution at the 2026 Global Digital Excellence Awards for Platform Reboot™, our approach to replacing fragmented SaaS and aging business applications with purpose-built, AI-native software. Being named to the shortlist is meaningful because the work we entered is not a concept or a prototype. It is a production platform we built by applying Platform Reboot to our own operations, measuring the results, and making the outcome available for judges to inspect.
Building AI around the work, not around the hype
Sphere is an AI, data, software, and cloud technology company focused on turning complex operational problems into systems that are useful in the real world. That is also the thinking behind Platform Reboot. Many organizations are carrying a mix of legacy applications and SaaS tools that solve individual problems but create a larger one over time. Data becomes fragmented. Integrations become brittle. Subscription costs grow. Teams rely on manual handoffs and workarounds. And the organization has less control over the software that runs important parts of the business.
Platform Reboot provides a structured way to decide what should be retained, modernized, replaced, or retired, then move toward software the organization can own and evolve. Instead of assuming every system needs a rewrite, the approach looks at cost, dependencies, risk, workflow fit, and business value before determining the right path.
We put Platform Reboot to work inside Sphere
For the award entry, we focused on Sphere’s own internal implementation. Five separate systems covering CRM, marketing automation, website chat, customer support, and lead generation were consolidated into one AI-native platform in 20 days.
The new platform shares one governed data foundation and embeds AI directly into day-to-day workflows. AI account intelligence brings company context, fit signals, and likely pain points into the CRM. Lead qualification and scoring make it easier to prioritize inbound opportunities. Sphere AI can reason across live deal data, deadlines, tasks, and blockers to recommend the next action. Other workflows include AI-assisted campaign drafting, a retrieval-augmented website assistant, and support triage and response drafting, with people remaining responsible for customer-facing decisions.
The economics are equally important. Sphere Finance verified approximately $102,000 per year in recurring software and SaaS costs eliminated through the consolidation. The replacement platform costs approximately $5,000 annually to operate, including cloud infrastructure and AI model usage. That produces approximately $95,000 in net annual savings before counting labor savings or productivity improvements.
Why the shortlist is important to us
The Global Digital Excellence Awards recognize digital work for creativity, innovation, and impact. Platform Reboot is shortlisted alongside other AI software products from around the world, which makes the recognition especially valuable to the team that designed, built, tested, and now uses the platform every day.
“Being shortlisted is important because this was not something we built for an award. We put Platform Reboot to work inside Sphere, replaced systems we relied on every day, and measured the result. For us, that is what applied AI should look like. It should solve a real operational problem, keep people accountable for the decisions that matter, and create value you can actually measure.”
— Leon Ginsburg, Founder and CEO, Sphere
For our team, the shortlist is also validation of an approach we have been pushing consistently across our AI work. Start with the operational problem. Build around the people responsible for the work. Connect AI to the data and systems it needs. Keep governance and human review inside the workflow. Then measure whether the result is genuinely better than what came before.
Platform Reboot demonstrates that approach in a way that is unusually close to home. We were our own customer. We experienced the SaaS sprawl, the disconnected workflows, and the recurring costs ourselves. That made the project a useful proving ground and forced us to hold the solution to the same standard we would expect from any production system we deliver for a client.
What comes next
The winners of the 2026 Global Digital Excellence Awards will be announced on October 22. Whatever the final result, making the shortlist gives us an opportunity to share a practical example of AI moving beyond experimentation and into everyday business operations.
We are continuing to expand Platform Reboot and the AI capabilities around it, with the same focus on ownership, measurable outcomes, and software that fits the way an organization actually works. For companies facing rising SaaS costs, aging systems, or workflows held together by integrations and manual effort, the question is no longer whether AI can be added to the stack. The more useful question is whether the stack itself should be rethought.
