Why Most Irish Businesses are Missing Out on AI Productivity (And How to Be the 1 in 10).

Most Irish businesses have tried AI at this point. There are license’s in place, tools being tested, and some level of use across teams. However, the return is just not there yet. Research recently reported by Accenture shows that while up to 82% of working hours could now be supported by AI, only one in ten organisations have embedded it into their core operations.

That gap is what matters. It is the difference between using AI occasionally and actually seeing the benefit.

Why the gap exists

For most teams, AI sits on the edges rather than inside the work itself. People use it when they remember or when they have time. There is rarely a clear link to output, no real measurement of what has improved, and no single owner pushing it forward. It ends up being helpful in places, but not changing much overall and its impact rarely measured.

So where do the gains actually lay?

By far, the quickest win is in automating repetitive manual tasks. Compiling spreadsheets, importing and exporting and reconciling data, report building, fact finding are all areas that can be streamlined. For example, in sales, it speeds up research and makes follow up more consistent. In marketing, it speeds up content and tightens campaigns. Internally, it takes time out of proposals, reporting and admin. In Finance, it can speed up arduous reconciliation work.

Identifying these tasks and making the decision to streamline them, free’s people up to work on more meaningful work. This is the first place to see your return on AI.

Five checks to see where you stand

1. Identify exactly where we are losing time each week.
2. Identify a small number of AI use cases that save us time.
3. Make AI part of the workflow rather than something optional.
4. Measure output quality or time saved regularly to gauge progress.
5. Train users on the appropriate tools, confirm that they are being used properly and enhance the process over time.

In short, focus on improving the process, measure it and you’ll likely see immediate benefits.

Our take on this

AI’s potential for business improvement is immense. However, deciding where to start can be daunting. Transforming your business aggressively is not the answer. As discussed above, the start can be as simple as automating a manual task. For the more ambitious, the structure and health of your company’s data need to be central to your considerations.

Our team have a healthy perspective on AI when it comes to business. We help companies that are interested in using AI with automations that make sense and have impact. For more data intensive organisations, we advise on direction and help execute a plan that can scale and leverage what AI can offer both now and into the future.

Frequently asked questions

Why are most businesses not seeing results from AI?

Because most AI use today is informal, users using AI assistants casually, and is not core to how the company does business and improvements are rarely measured.

Do we need a large budget to get value?

The cost will depend on your company’s ambition. It starts with a relatively cheap subscription to a service like CoPilot (Microsoft) or Claude (Anthropic). Companies should be aware of ‘compute’ costs which are related to the amount of AI compute power you consume monthly. Again, this is a relatively low cost but depends on thoughtful deployment or costs can escalate.  

Where should we start?

Appoint an AI champion in your business. Task them with automating a small number of workflows that will have impact. Measure. And start again. Start with work that happens every week in sales, marketing or operations.