Leading full-service digital agency, CTI Digital, held its first company-wide hackathon, bringing together developers, designers, strategists, and QA specialists to explore AI's potential in solving real business challenges. The dedicated innovation day saw the CTI Digital team tackle everything from technical improvements to creative experiments, with artificial intelligence playing a central role in every solution.
Stepping away from usual client work, the CTI team picked from a range of challenges covering process improvements, passion projects, and forward-thinking experiments. Each project required AI integration, whether for research, code generation, or core functionality.
Projects delivered meaningful business improvements alongside creative innovations. One team built an interface between Amazon Alexa and Slack for seamless office music control, while others focused on solutions with direct client impact.
The hackathon also produced a new AI-powered estimation and bid process tool, built entirely in-house using CTI Digital’s own AI model. The system also uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to tap into CTI’s extensive library of past pitch documents, delivering contextually accurate and relevant outputs for future proposals.
This system will streamline the bidding process, analyse past proposals, and even feed into retrospectives when pitches are unsuccessful, ensuring lessons learned are immediately built into future wins.
The day also advanced several emerging technology initiatives that will benefit CTI Digital’s clients, including:
AR overlays for immersive mobile experiences triggered directly from client websites
VR walkthroughs to showcase CTI Digital’s offices and culture to prospective clients and recruits
An AI-powered customer chatbot to support and engage clients in real time
Teams competed for prizes recognising the most challenges completed, most innovative solution, and best use of AI, with winners receiving cash prizes and CTI Digital merchandise.
Chris Burgess, CEO at CTI Digital, said, “We’ve been delivering digital transformation for 21 years, but the pace of change has never been faster. Hackathons like this keep us ahead of the curve, give our people hands-on experience with emerging tools, and break down silos between teams. It’s innovation in action, and it’s a lot of fun too.”
Many solutions developed during the hackathon will move directly into production, delivering measurable benefits to both clients and internal operations. The teams implemented AI across automated QA, content generation, and data analysis, strengthening CTI Digital’s competitive advantage and client offering.
Burgess added, “We're just scratching the surface of what’s possible with AI. Events like this help us discover practical, real-world applications and build the confidence to bring them into client projects.”
