The past few years have been tough in business, and all business leaders face a delicate balancing act. With every interest rate rise, company budgets take a hit, making cost-cutting a necessity. The thing is, the demand for digital products and services continues to surge, creating something of a perfect storm – how do we deliver more, with less? Well, luckily or perhaps serendipitously, a new technology has arrived that we believe holds the key to unlocking remarkable efficiencies and paving the way for growth. Yep, of course I’m talking about Generative AI (GenAI).
Like so many of you, I’ve come to dread the monthly RBA meeting where we hear if everything is going to be that little bit more expensive, again. In contrast to the COVID years, where of course we faced so many challenges as a society, but money had never been cheaper. We saw huge investments into digital products and application modernisation projects, leading to massive amounts of work and labour shortages across our industry. And then, just like that, it all changed so quickly. Interest rates have soared, tech layoffs began and budgets shrank dramatically. But the COVID years had accelerated something. Consumers that were already demanding the best digital tools are not going to ease up on that. To stay competitive, businesses have to figure out a way to keep delivering on the digital promise to their customers, but in a far tougher economic climate. We’ve got to get creative
For clarity, I don’t see this as an ‘AI taking people’s jobs’ scenario that frankly is just alarmist. GenAI offers the opportunity to dramatically assist in all stages of the development cycle by integrating AI agents with human specialists, and in doing so streamlining processes, boosting productivity, and creating more value with fewer resources.
Being an early adopter is hard, I get that. But businesses don’t need to go it alone. We’re working with a cohort of 12 major companies to really stress test the limits of what can be achieved in this space. Early indicators show that the productivity gains might be even higher than our most optimistic estimates. This really is the technology that will unlock unprecedented efficiencies and drive transformative growth, towards hype-rdigital squads and later, hyper-personalisation.
What does this actually look like? Some examples across the development phases are:
- Automate the process “translation” between each of the key phases in the SDLC, from ideation, design, through development, testing and operations
- Provide real-time insights on successful UX patterns, wireframes, and customer journeys
- Accelerate coding by providing recommendations, refactoring, detecting vulnerabilities, helping understand existing code patterns
- Automate issue identification and diagnosis in testing
Truly, this is just a very small part of what can be done. “The spectrum of options is awe-inspiring.
My message to business leaders is simple – don’t die wondering. Generative AI offers an unprecedented opportunity to drive efficiency and propel growth in the Australian business landscape. Rather than being – in average or some companies – in our customary position of ‘a few years behind’, Australian businesses can spearhead innovation and steer the nation’s economy toward a prosperous and technologically advanced future. It’s time to tap into the potential of Generative AI and unlock unprecedented possibilities within our businesses and the broader Australian economy.
Felipe Rubim is SVP, Digital Solutions at digital transformation specialists, CI&T.
