HubSpot Report: AI Saves Australian Workforce Two Days Per Week As Productivity Falls

HubSpot, the customer relationship management (CRM) platform for scaling companies, today announced the findings of a research report conducted by YouGov on the usage and attitudes around generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Australia.

AI saves time, drives effectiveness and increases productivity 

While Australia has long considered itself an early adopter of technology, the surging popularity of generative AI has shone a spotlight on gaps in productivity in Australian workplaces. The latest reports show GDP per hour worked shrank 3.6 per cent across the year and is languishing back at 2016 levels, however, Goldman Sachs predicts successful AI adoption could directly boost global GDP by 7 per cent.

On average, marketers in Australia estimated they would save 2.9 hours per day using AI tools to create marketing content, while sales professionals predicted a saving of 2.6 hours per day. With a potential productivity gain of nearly two days per week, the prospect of moving towards a shorter, yet more productive, work week en masse could finally become a reality. This is becoming increasingly pertinent as budgets come under scrutiny and national levels of burnout increase.

The Australian workforce is overwhelmingly behind this move, with nine in ten (91 per cent) marketers saying they would save time using AI tools to create content, and 86 per cent of sales professionals and marketers claiming they are more productive at work using AI tools compared to without them.

In addition to benefiting from time efficiencies, businesses stand to reap the rewards of greater effectiveness through AI. With over three quarters of respondents (76 per cent) heralding AI tools as effective in making their content more personalised, increased adoption of the technology is likely to lead to deeper, more scalable connections between businesses and their customers.

Education the key to unlocking AI’s full potential

When it comes to the biggest challenges in leveraging AI, education has proven to be a significant barrier to entry. Around one in three sales professionals and marketers say they find it difficult to know how to prompt AI tools to achieve desired results (35 per cent). Just over a third say AI sometimes produces inaccurate information (34 per cent), the content GAI produces isn’t always relevant to their desired goal (32 per cent), or they don’t know where to begin with GAI tools and need education and training (31 per cent).

As specialist roles like Prompt Engineer and Natural Language Processing Engineer gain in popularity, their years of experience can not exceed the lifespan of AI, which is still in its infancy. In the meantime, Aussies are teaching themselves the tools of the trade. Of those that have mastered the tools, nearly all (97 per cent) say they are important for their day-to-day work. For example text generation (66 per cent) and visual AI (63 per cent) are the tools perceived to be most important for the day-to-day work of marketers, followed by chatbots (56 per cent) and audio AI (49 per cent).

Recent research from Microsoft and the Tech Council of Australia reveals GAI could contribute as much as $115 billion a year to Australia’s economy by 2030, showcasing the value of championing upskilling in the field. But businesses that have avoided formalising a roll out of the tools could fall  behind the curve. HubSpot’s data shows that over half (59 per cent) of Aussie workers are using AI tools in their role despite their organisation not investing in these tools. AI is gaining in popularity extremely quickly, and business leaders must encourage its safe deployment of AI within the organisation to reach its full potential.

In the epic David-vs.-Goliath battle, AI is the slingshot 

As a nation of innovators and early adopters, Australia has an opportunity to become a global leader in AI. Larger organisations are currently getting ahead of the game, with 66 per cent having invested in AI tools compared to just 54 per cent of small businesses, and 92 per cent of marketers and sales professionals at large businesses claiming AI would make them more productive, compared to 82 per cent of those at small businesses.

But for SMBs, AI tools provide an opportunity to level the playing field to compete like never before. Large companies once dominated because they had big budgets and big teams until inbound marketing proved that the size of your brain mattered more than the size of your wallet to attract customers. Activities that once took time, money, and deep expertise no longer do. As a result, SMBs with less time and fewer resources can now generate content, insights, and commands in seconds, closing the gap between enterprises and SMBs.

“AI is not something that’s about to disrupt our day-to-days — it already has” said Dan Bognar, vice president and managing director, JAPAC at HubSpot.

“Streamlining content creation and increasing effectiveness in the sales function are just the tip of the iceberg, it’s what’s underneath that makes the opportunity truly mind blowing —  its accessibility to businesses of all shapes and sizes. AI is levelling the playing field and putting the sling shot into the hands of the SMB community. This is particularly true when it comes to personalising customer interactions, driving customer connection and accelerating scale and growth which, thanks to AI, can now be optimised”.

“I expect Australia’s business community will be quick to take advantage of that opportunity. It’s a bit like the David and Goliath metaphor,  AI democratises technology and gives equal opportunity for SMBs to go after the big giants”.

Earlier this year, HubSpot unveiled HubSpot AI, a new set of platform-wide AI-powered products and features to help customer-facing teams unlock productivity, harness data for improved performance, and create deeper connections with customers.

HubSpot’s recent launches of Content Assistant and ChatSpot are early examples of how it helps its users boost productivity, improve conversion rates, and delight customers. Whether drafting a blog post, an email to a prospect, a new landing page, or converting a report into a presentation, HubSpot provides the tools needed to connect with customers and grow, no matter the challenge.