Datacom executives, including Ms Compagnone, hosted Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Finance Minister Nicola Willis and MBIE chief executive Carolyn Tremain at Datacom’s Wellington office last week to discuss the role of AI in enabling growth and shaping New Zealand’s economic future.
The information technology services company’s latest business outlook survey showed 77% of business leaders were worried about economic uncertainty and focused on growth and productivity this year, with help from GenAI and data-driven insights.
AI, at 46%, was identified by businesses as the biggest technology opportunity for their organisation. Datacom has seen a rapid uptick in AI adoption, also captured in its State of AI Index, which showed the use of AI among New Zealand businesses jumped from 48% in 2023 to 66% in 2024.
The survey highlights some practical obstacles to adopting AI and other emerging technologies, including budget constraints (34%) and a lack of skilled resources (15%).
Ms Compagnone, who has spent 20 years in the technology sector, said her role at Datacom was two-fold; it was partly helping the organisation operationally implement and adopt AI, and helping set up its AI centre of enablement, which included thinking about how to do things safely and how to build skills and capabilities.
She also helped customers do the same thing.
When talking to businesses, she stressed how it was not just a change in technology but a fundamental shift in the way businesses were going to operate.
She started talking at the top level of what their mission and goals were, and how AI could help with that, before exploring the best pathway to get there and how to get the organisation’s people to be part of that process.
It required a deep understanding of the organisation before thinking about technology, rather than starting with the technology, she said.
While AI had been around for a long time, the “latest wave” had been a good way of democratising tech and thinking about it in lots of different ways.
It was more than Copilot and ChatGPT, “it’s thinking about all of the different layers of your organisation and how AI can help”.
A good starting point was using the likes of conversational AI, things like voice bots to help with triaging queries.
There were so many ways to help with productivity, both personal and functional.
Getting the foundations right was the key and she was helping a lot of organisations to set up an AI council, a central body responsible for thinking about how to integrate and adopt AI including security, governance and ethical aspects.
There was also the importance of building the capability of an organisation’s people. Without that, it was deploying a tool no-one could use and there would not be the benefits.
Ms Compagnone saw a mix of attitudes to AI, including those who were not prepared to invest in it to those who had “absolute fear” it would replace people.
If it was important for a organisation to reduce staff and have AI running the business, then personally that was not the future she wanted to be part of.
“You really deliberately need to think about how AI is going to integrate around people’s work flows and roles and be a co-pilot rather than replacement.”
Datacom is partnering with Business South as a sponsor for the MINDNZ in action conference which is being held in early May, and would share some of its AI research and experience with local businesses.
