Australian organisations are investing more in AI, yet the technology still seems to be delivering less fundamental change locally than it does overseas. A recent enterprise survey by a major consulting institute, covering more than 3,000 senior leaders worldwide, shows that while local investment intentions are strong, Australian respondents are less likely to say AI is substantially transforming their organisations or industries. This gap appears to stem less from a lack of interest and more from how adoption is being approached on the ground.
In Australia, around 65% of surveyed organisations plan to increase AI investment in the coming financial year, with roughly one in four signalling a sizeable uplift. However, only about 12% say generative AI is currently reshaping their organisation and sector in a major way, compared with roughly a quarter of respondents globally. The picture is similar for agentic AI, where only a small proportion of local leaders see it as transformative today and global respondents are roughly twice as confident about near-term impact. At the same time, about 81% of Australian leaders expect an AI-driven productivity boost, still high but trailing the roughly 90% global figure.
One reason is that many local companies are using AI mainly to streamline individual roles or selected workflows rather than to reinvent how the entire organisation operates. More than a third of Australian respondents say they are redesigning several key processes while leaving their broader business model intact, which is higher than the global average. In contrast, overseas organisations are more likely to use AI as a catalyst to rethink core processes, launch new products and services and open up fresh revenue streams, which naturally creates more visible and wide-ranging transformation.
A more modern path to scaling AI treats the technology as a structural shift rather than a bolt-on tool. This approach assumes that, over time, every organisation will blend human workers with AI agents, moving from people using AI tools to defined human-agent teaming and eventually to largely automated workflows with targeted human oversight. Companies that deliberately redesign operating models around this blended workforce and embed AI into core operations tend to scale faster, reduce fragmentation and create longer-term value, even though the transition is complex and demands sustained executive ownership.
Australian organisations also face a familiar set of non-financial barriers that make this shift harder, including governance and risk concerns, gaps in AI-capable talent and challenges around technology access, cost and reliable data. When handled strategically, these hurdles start to look less like blockers and more like design constraints. Technology and data questions become about building secure, sovereign architectures and disciplined data pipelines, not just worrying about external security and rising usage costs. Talent strategies expand beyond quick hiring and short-term upskilling into broader workforce planning that reshapes roles, capabilities and cost structures as AI becomes embedded across the business.
Governance and compliance similarly evolve from reactive risk management into proactive operational trust. That means building controls into AI systems from design through testing, deployment and live use, supported by continuous monitoring and clear intervention rules. As local leaders prepare new AI budgets, the key question is whether their projects are truly integrating AI into the heart of operations or just delivering isolated wins in silos. Aligning AI investment with whole-of-business change appears to be the only way Australian organisations can match global peers and share fully in the productivity and innovation gains that AI-led transformation promises.
