Scottish Edge

Company Overview

Scottish EDGE is Scotland’s largest business funding competition, providing grants and loans to help startups, social enterprises, and charities grow. Since its inception, Scottish EDGE has supported hundreds of high-potential ventures, helping to drive Scotland’s entrepreneurial ecosystem forward.

The Challenge

Scottish EDGE identified a bottleneck in handling high volumes of applicant queries during funding rounds. These queries often covered the same questions, consumed valuable staff time and created barriers for entrepreneurs who needed quick, accessible information.

To overcome this, Scottish EDGE aimed to create an AI-powered agent/avatar that could operate 24/7, answer FAQs, and guide potential applicants through the process, ultimately expanding capacity for applications and increasing the number of potential winners.

Project Aims

Scottish EDGE teamed with Tag Digital with the aim of developing an AI agent/avatar for the Scottish EDGE website to provide instant, around-the-clock support. They wanted to reduce administrative workload by answering common funding queries automatically and reduce barriers for entrepreneurs by offering guidance throughout the application process.

Key Outcomes

• Scottish EDGE created and developed EDGEword, an AI chatbot avatar providing 24/7 customer support on the Scottish EDGE website.
• The funding has allowed for operational efficiency and reduced administrative time spent on repetitive queries.
• During the first Scottish EDGE application period with EDGEword in place, it answered approximately 150 queries from potential applicants.
• This project has opened opportunities for international licensing of the AI solution to the wider business support ecosystem.
• The team has also been upskilled and enhanced their in-house AI knowledge to future-proof further development and refinement of the system.
• Daily transcripts from the AI agent have delivered valuable insights into visitor needs, directly shaping updates to site content.