Helping Australian SMEs take a first serious step with AI
DKE is the delivery partner for the ARM Hub AI Adopt Centre, a federally funded programme that helps Australian small and medium businesses assess and adopt data and AI.
The problem
Australian manufacturers know AI matters. Very few have a way to work out where it fits in their own business, and the cost of finding out privately is beyond most of them. Left alone, the usual outcome is either nothing at all or a tool bought on a sales pitch that never reaches the floor.
The pattern repeats almost exactly. A light IT footprint, no clear owner for data, and information spread across ten to thirty separate tools.
What we do
We deliver the technical side of the programme, which means sitting with each business and working through what is actually in front of them rather than running a generic workshop.
- Assess where the business actually is. What data exists, what state it is in, and what the team can realistically operate.
- Find and rank the use cases. Ordered by what pays back soonest and what the data can currently support, not by what demonstrates well.
- Say no where no is the answer. A good number of these conversations end with a process fix rather than an AI project, and that is a legitimate result.
- Leave a plan they own. Each business finishes with something they can fund, take to their own team, or take to another vendor.
Where it landed
- More than 300 Australian SMEs engaged, mostly manufacturers
- Advanced health manufacturers among them
- A repeatable assessment approach, proven across hundreds of businesses
- The discovery model on this site came directly out of this work
Our view
Three hundred conversations with businesses that had nothing to sell us taught us more than any amount of market research would have. Our four service pathways came out of what those companies actually needed, in the order they needed it.
Not sure whether AI fits your business at all?
That is the question the programme exists to answer, and the answer is sometimes no.