AI adoption is moving beyond pilots at uneven rates

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 44:07

   When you talk to this amazing enterprise customer base that is deeply embedded with you, and then, as you said, importantly, trusts you and trusts you to do more all the time, what is the state of play in terms of, you know, you describe a very forward-looking vision for what AI can do to transform enterprises. Like, where are people today? What are the first questions they ask you? Do they believe it? Yeah, I think that's a great point because most people today know that they have to do something with AI. But like in the case of Brazil, as an example, only 11% of the companies since that was last night's meeting have actually gotten past the experiment phase where they're doing experiments. And so we're seeing now that companies are going past the experiment phase into mainstream on building the agentic business

2. 45:01

   on building the agents to complement the humans and i'm driving business model innovation and efficiency that is now picking up steam but you have to remember it's a very diverse set out there I mean, in public sector, they're just basically now trying to consolidate complexity and get one department to speak to another department so we don't have billions of fraud getting through the cracks. um other industries like healthcare as an example we're now moving into the modernization phase so the patient experience isn't so miserable because the professionals that work there are great but the systems have been holding them back but if you look at a financial services firm for example um you know they're moving full full speed on what can i do with ai to fundamentally rethink how I run my company,

3. 45:57

   to manage my headcount better, to get more done with a lot less. So it's kind of based on industry, based on geo. Different geos have adopted it more quickly. The U.S. is the leader in terms of consumption and adoption of AI and then moving faster. I give you a flavor of some of the industries, but I would say that it's more about modernization as a standard and the first movers now are moving out with ai and they're aggressive and they're going for it when you think about like what going for it means are there a set of use cases that are universal across companies or are there different things that matter to the different i think that they're um they're looking at their business model and what can ai do to change my business model the ones that are first movers or early movers and head count is definitely on the

4. 46:57

   table obviously if you believe in the agent world and you do increase head count it's because you can see that the heads are supporting the digital transformation and the inclusion of the agents and there's more revenue to be gotten by adding them yeah there's roi on it yeah exactly and And they're not going to add them anymore, meaning people, without a clear ROI case. And in many cases, a lot of these companies, especially if you look at the years 2020 to 2024, they hired a lot through COVID.

5. 47:34

   Not a lot of people talk about this. I haven't actually heard anyone talk about it, but when they did the hiring and everybody had a hand in this, a lot of it was virtual. A lot of it then was, you know, keep the people. We need the people. You know, there's a crisis out there. And now they've realized they've layered up the companies. Some of the people maybe didn't get. As close a look as they should have because, you know, Zoom was the way to meet them, greet them, and hire them.

6. 48:08

   And now with the inclusion of AI in the business model and the innovation of the companies, it's kind of like, how do we get leaner? How do we get smarter? And if AI does make us better, we should see that in the ultimate profitability of the company, the revenue per employee of the company. And the company should have expanding margins, expanding or re-accelerating revenue, and should be in a more exciting growth story than it was two, three, four, five years ago.