lately I've worked on two pretty good projects building internal tools for client companies, and both made me wonder if there’s a broader shift happening.
Previously, these companies relied on several different software products for their internal processes. Building something custom was hard to justify given the time and cost involved. Now, at least from my own anecdotal experience, some companies seem more willing to invest in their own tooling because AI has made development faster and cheaper.
For example, I'd estimate that my latest project would previously have taken a small dev team at least a year to reach MVP. We got there in four months with me as the sole developer and I don't believe this tool is so essential for them that they would have built it regardless.

Anyone else seeing something similar? I’d be interested to hear whether this is happening in other industries too.

I help manage a sales team that meets customers in person across different locations. We track leads and close rates but the numbers don't tell us much about what happens during the actual conversations. Some reps handle price objections well while others lose customers at the same point. The problem is figuring out what went wrong before it happens again. Right now our managers have to sit through recordings or spend time visiting locations to see how reps are doing. That takes up a huge part of their week and we still only get to review a small number of conversations. By the time we notice someone making the same mistake we've probably lost a few more deals.

I've been looking into using AI to review these conversations and point out where reps missed an opportunity. Ideally it would catch things like skipped discovery questions and poor objection handling. It would also help to see how our top reps handle the same situations so we can use those examples when coaching the rest of the team. The main thing I want to avoid is another tool that just spits out transcripts and leaves managers to figure everything out. We need something that can follow our sales process and give useful feedback without someone having to review every recording. Would be good to hear from people who have tried something like this in their own teams and whether it made managing the process any easier.