Australian firms lose time to repetitive admin work

Omniche Advisory says Australian businesses are losing significant time because skilled staff spend too much of their week on repetitive administrative work. It argues this is a broad productivity problem, not a narrow debate about artificial intelligence.

The consultancy describes the drain as "work about work" - tasks such as reporting, email handling, data gathering and manual reconciliation that consume hours across management, sales, marketing and back-office teams. It says businesses should start by identifying where time is being lost before deciding whether automation, AI or process redesign is the right response.

The argument comes as companies face rising pressure to show they are acting on AI, even when the underlying problem may be poor workflow design or fragmented systems. In Omniche's view, organisations risk wasting money if they start with a tool rather than a business bottleneck.

"The conversation around AI has become too focused on what technology might replace, when the more useful question is what it can give back to people," said Christie Cash, AI and Data Executive Advisor at Omniche Advisory.

Peter Gunn, Chief Information Officer and Chief Executive Officer, said the bigger opportunity for many employers is to reclaim staff time for customer work, problem-solving and management rather than pursue AI for its own sake.

"Not everybody needs AI. Everybody needs automation. The question is: where are we spending time that could be spent helping customers, being creative, solving problems or developing people," Gunn said.

He said the answer is not always a new AI system.

"Sometimes the answer is AI. Sometimes it's automation. Sometimes the problem is the process itself. We don't want to put AI on a problem that doesn't need it," he said.

Where time goes

Omniche points to several common examples. Managers may spend hours each week compiling reports manually, sales staff may be tied up entering and checking customer data, and marketing teams may lose time formatting and moving information between systems instead of focusing on campaign ideas and planning.

Some business processes that now take days can be reduced to hours if organisations combine automation, better data use and AI in the right places, according to Omniche. It did not provide financial estimates for those savings, but framed the issue as redeploying labour toward higher-value work rather than cutting headcount.

"The goal isn't to make people work faster so we can give them even more work," Cash said. "It's about asking what we could do with the time we give back to them."

That emphasis on redeployment runs through Omniche's argument. In its view, the value of new technology depends on whether reclaimed time is used for stronger customer service, better internal decision-making, more creative work or staff development.

"The point isn't just to take something off someone's plate," Cash said. "It's about giving them the chance to do something more valuable with that time."

Measured approach

Omniche says businesses should assess work across functions including finance, human resources, marketing, IT and operations to understand where friction sits. Those opportunities can then be ranked by business impact, effort, risk and return, and placed into short- and longer-term delivery plans.

The approach reflects a broader market shift as some advisory firms move away from general promises about AI transformation and toward narrower use cases tied to cost, productivity, speed or risk reduction. For employers under pressure to justify technology spending, that framing may prove more attractive than open-ended experimentation.

Cash said companies should be wary of adopting AI simply because competitors are doing so or because a new product is attracting attention.

"AI is a tool. Automation is a tool. Data is a tool. The important thing is understanding what you're trying to achieve."

Human oversight

Omniche also argues that wider AI adoption will produce reliable results only if staff understand when to trust output and when to challenge it. Human review remains necessary, especially in customer-facing or high-stakes work, it says.

Cash used a simple comparison to make the point.

"It can produce something incredibly useful, but you wouldn't take what an intern gives you and send it straight to a client without checking it."

Gunn said management culture also matters, particularly if businesses want staff to test tools openly and report where they fail. Organisations should create space for employees to discuss experimentation without fear of blame, he said.

"People need to feel safe saying, 'I tried this and it didn't work,'" Gunn said. "If we're going to get the benefits of these technologies, we need curiosity. We don't want people hiding how they're using them because they're worried about getting it wrong."

Founded in 2018, Omniche advises organisations on technology strategy, AI, data and modernisation. Cash said demand for its training offering grew after clients that had asked the firm to help build systems began seeking support to teach their own teams how to use them.

"We started as doers," Cash said. "We were going into organisations and helping them build these things. Then clients started asking us to teach their people how to do it themselves. That's how our training developed."

She said the clearest test of value is whether staff get meaningful time back.

"If we can take three days of manual work and turn it into three hours, that's not just an AI story," Cash said. "That's three days of someone's time that can be used differently. That's where the real business value is."