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International Coffee Day on Thursday 1 October 2026 offers an opportunity to take a break from the daily business buzz and consider another kind of buzz changing the workplace: AI.
According to Annemarie Viljoen of Bizmod Consulting, “There’s so much buzz around AI that businesses can feel pressure to jump onto the latest tool or platform. But perhaps we need to take a step back and ask a much simpler question: what could we be doing better?”
Rather than starting with the technology, Viljoen believes businesses should identify where they are losing time, money, or efficiency, and then consider whether AI can assist.
That could mean reducing the hours spent compiling reports, making it easier to find information for audits, or allowing employees to get answers to routine business questions without someone having to manually retrieve the information.
“These aren’t necessarily the flashy applications of AI,” says Viljoen. “But if you can give someone back five hours a week by removing repetitive work, that can make a meaningful difference to a business.”
Don’t get caught up in the AI buzz
The rapidly growing number of AI tools can make it tempting to find a technology first and then look for somewhere to use it. Viljoen’s experience suggests a different approach.
“Different tools are good at different things. I’ve found ChatGPT useful for certain communication and creative requirements, while Copilot has been useful for some business analysis and agent-building activities,” she says. “The question isn’t what tool is the best. It’s which one is right for the job and the output you need to achieve.”
However, while AI can accelerate work, it doesn’t remove the need for people to check the work.
Viljoen’s experience building an AI agent demonstrated this when an agent that had repeatedly produced correct answers later generated an incorrect response. “This is why human judgement remains critical,” she says. “You need people who understand the subject and information and who can recognise when something doesn’t look right.” AI cannot replace a human at this stage. Still, it can reduce time spent on administration such as writing, reviewing, correcting, answering, or changing information so that the human can review and approve.
This is also why responsible AI adoption needs to extend beyond the IT department. Employees need to understand how to use AI appropriately, what information they can share with AI tools, and the potential privacy, security, and ethical implications. “Automation without accountability isn’t transformation,” says Viljoen.
Start with one small win
For businesses wondering where to begin, Viljoen believes the best starting point may be much smaller than they think.
“If something used to take you three hours and you can now do it in 20 minutes, you don’t need someone to convince you that AI has value. You’ve experienced it.”
Her advice is to identify a real business problem, experiment with a practical solution, train people properly, and measure whether it makes a difference and adds value. AI is still a technology tool to be used correctly to receive maximum benefit.
“AI shouldn’t be something we adopt because everyone else is doing it,” says Viljoen. “It should help us improve the way we work.”
The longer-term opportunity is to move beyond simply automating existing tasks and use AI, alongside quality data, and human expertise, to identify risks and opportunities earlier, deliver faster, and improve results much quicker
“That is where I think the conversation becomes really interesting,” says Viljoen. “It’s not just about automating what we already do. It’s about using technology to help us see opportunities, identify risks earlier, and continuously improve.”
So, when you take your coffee break this International Coffee Day, perhaps use those few minutes to ask a question that has nothing to do with which AI tool is trending, but more about where we could be working smarter, and if AI can help us get there? What am I currently doing that takes hours to do but does not add value while doing it, but only adds value when done?
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