AI Ready or Not

What this session is about

Your team is already using AI. Not in a pilot, not with a plan, and probably not on a tool anyone signed off. That is the starting position for almost every business we talk to, and it is a lot more common than most leaders think.

At the same time, the market has filled up with people making enormous claims about what AI will do for you. Some of it is real. Some of it is a very expensive way to get into trouble.

This session sits in the middle. We will explain the one distinction that almost nobody spells out clearly, show you what we actually run inside DJC, tell you about a few things that have gone badly wrong, and give you three concrete options depending on how ready you are. One of them costs nothing.

The one thing worth understanding

There are two different Microsoft Copilots, and confusing them is where most of the risk lives.

Free Copilot Chat reads the web. When your staff sign in with their work account it does not touch your SharePoint, your email or your Teams conversations at all. It knows nothing about your business. That is exactly why it is safe. The only way anything sensitive gets in there is if a person deliberately pastes it in.

Paid Copilot reads your business. It is grounded in your own tenant. Your mail, your files, your SharePoint, your meeting history. It works inside Word, Excel and Outlook rather than in a separate window.

That is the whole difference, and it is both the value and the risk in a single sentence. Paid Copilot behaves like a new staff member who has already read everything your permissions allow them to read. Which raises the question this session is named after: are your permissions ready for that?

Most are not. Not because anyone was careless, but because nobody has looked at them since the day they were set up.

What you will walk away with

• The distinction that matters. Free Copilot Chat versus paid Copilot, what each one can actually see, and why that single difference decides your whole approach.
• Three things that went wrong. A global manufacturer that lost source code in twenty days. A business that handed its database to the wrong "AI partner". And an over-shared calendar we found in a real client environment that would have told anyone who asked exactly where the CEO was on the weekend.
• What we run ourselves. Not a demo. The AI systems inside DJC that pull from twenty-three different sources, reconcile billing, drive account management recommendations and power the client portal.
• The people part. Your staff are more nervous about this than they are telling you, and silence from leadership makes it worse, not better. What to say and when.
• Three options, priced. One free, one at cost, one custom. And the questions to take to your leadership team so you can pick between them properly.

Is this session for you?

This is aimed at people who have to make the decision, not the people who will implement it.

• Business owners and managing directors weighing up whether to move at all.
• General managers and operations leaders watching staff use tools nobody approved.
• Finance leaders who want to know what this actually costs before it becomes a line item.
• HR leaders fielding quiet questions about what AI means for people's jobs.
• IT managers who already suspect the permissions will not survive contact with Copilot.

You do not need a technical background. Bring whoever you like from your team.

Your host

Dan Church, Managing Director, DJC Systems.

DJC has been looking after Australian businesses since 1999, from Melbourne, Sydney, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast. Dan will be joined by examples and war stories from across the DJC leadership team.