Please complete and submit the online award application (www.thehackettgroup.com/awards/application) by 7 p.m. EDT (midnight GMT) on Friday, March 13, 2026.

A panel of AI and business process experts from The Hackett Group^® will review all applications submitted and select the finalists.

The review panel will select a set of award finalists based on these criteria:

• Demonstrated evidence of actual – not planned – performance improvement in operational excellence and/or business value enabled through the exploitation of AI-enabled solutions
• At least one example of an AI-enabled use case that involves customers, operations, or a general and administrative (G&A) back-office process
• Agreement from the organization implementing the solution to be named and cited publicly as an award recipient
• Any organization can apply as long as it demonstrates its own internal use to improve its business performance. Technology vendors and solution providers can submit applications on behalf of a client, but the client must participate in the judging process and agree to the terms for award consideration

If your application is selected as a finalist, you will be contacted by a member of the selection team to arrange one or more interviews. The organization employing the solution (not an implementation partner) must complete the interview to receive further award consideration. The review panel will choose award recipients from the companies interviewed.

All applications will be judged on four primary criteria:

• Business value: What value was created? What is the impact and advantage realized? To what degree did performance change from the baseline to post-implementation?
• Complexity: How complex was the problem addressed? How did the team overcome acknowledged process, data and technology challenges to deliver? How does the solution demonstrate the evolution of the AI journey toward an advanced agentic approach (i.e., multiple AI agents collaborating versus stand-alone agents)?
• Use of AI: What tangible evidence exists of the use of AI capability to enable transformational changes in the business operating model?
• Innovation: How did the approach represent out-of-the-box thinking? To what degree could it be applied beyond a single domain or used to solve other business problems?

We will present one or more awards in categories corresponding to the end-to-end business processes listed on page 5.

• Customer
• Operations
• Finance
• Human resources
• Global business services
• Technology
• Other

The deadline to apply is 7 p.m. EDT (midnight GMT) on Friday, March 13, 2026. Award recipients will be announced by mid-June 2026.