CEOs say AI having real world impact, but pressure is building

Next-generation AI is already delivering real benefits to Australian companies, customers and clients, but at the same time is putting pressure on firms to adapt their business models, top CEOs say.

Adoption of AI tools, like Microsoft’s Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is now widespread in Australian businesses, with thousands of employees in a diverse range of industries including retail, professional services and banking using them, attendees at CommBank’s Accelerate AI conference heard.

Adoption of those tools, as well as AI models developed in house, had moved from pilot stage over the last two years to everyday usage, with real productivity benefits in efficiency, speed and use at scale now beginning to emerge, CEOs from retailer Coles, law firm Gilbert + Tobin and CBA said.

But as these changes have started to flow through, businesses are having to look closely at how they are organised, how they serve customers and clients, and how data is used to deliver better outcomes, as well as where real value lies from a whole-of-company perspective.

Keeping Coles’ shelves stocked

Coles, Australia’s biggest employer with 115,000 staff, handles 18 million transactions across its 850 stores every week and is using AI to handle stocking, delivery and supply-to-shelf for 26,000 products, CEO Leah Weckert said at the event.

The process involves analysing 109 million predictions daily to look at likely customer needs and purchases 100 days out – something that would not be possible using human capability alone, Weckert said.

It had helped “materially improve” the availability and reliability of products for customers.

“There's nothing more important for the customer than when they come into store with a list of products to buy and they can't find the pieces that they are after,” Weckert said.

“Over time, we've added more and more data feeds into this system.”

Other customer-focused initiatives are allowing for greater personalisation with help to organise shopping lists.

In time, this could evolve into a service where AI could undertake a household’s weekly shopping without them having to be involved at all, Weckert said.

“There are lots of benefits for our customers in terms of making interactions far more frictionless, giving them much more reliability around availability of product in store. And for our team, it means that they're a lot more productive,” she said.

Premium advice at G+T

At Gilbert + Tobin, which has around 1,000 staff, including 700 lawyers, individual employees had been encouraged to use AI tools in what CEO Sam Nickless described as an early “cut and paste era” for the company.

That had produced personal productivity benefits, but the next step was to capture gains and opportunities across the whole firm, Nickless said.

Reducing risk is a focus area for AI use and Nickless cited the example of using AI to review every single property lease in a transaction for a client, rather than just using a cross-section sample because of the huge amount of work involved for human reviewers.

“For us, there'll be changes in how we produce our services,” Nickless said. “There'll have to be changes in how we charge clients for them, how we contract new clients.”

Adapting to AI would also become a factor in how the performance of G+T’s people was evaluated, he said.

As well as improving the service for clients, AI would also allow G+T’s lawyers to work on more complex and specialised issues and provide premium advice that would provide obvious and recognisable value for clients, he said. Pricing models may have to change to suit the new environment, he said.

“I still believe there'll be a premium that clients will want to pay for judgment, but it will be for the very best judgment,” he added.

While AI offered many opportunities, AI had to be introduced with the guardrails and data protection that maintained client trust, Nickless said. “For professional services firms, if you get this wrong through this transition, it's existential,” he said.

More personalised banking

CBA was undergoing a similar transformation, said CEO Matt Comyn. A higher degree of personalisation and continual improvements in the digital experience were helping to transform services for customers, he said.

AI was being used across the bank, from engineering and software coding to fraud and scams detection, payments and data analysis, a combination which in time would result in benefits for customers, staff and the company, Comyn said.

“Over the last couple of years, we've made a very concerted effort to make sure we're demonstrating real value to our customers,” he said.  “That has been in intuitive, better experiences that are personalised and guided [and where] customers feel better protected.”

There was also an emphasis on ensuring that AI was introduced and used in a safe, responsible and trustworthy way, he added. Given that there were understandable concerns about its application globally and domestically, it was critical this be done in a transparent and open way.

“I think for us making sure trust is really the permission to be able to scale this technology which, of course, attracts an enormous amount of attention,” Comyn said.