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September 23, 2026
Most businesses can name an AI tool but considerably less can name an applicable use case – once a sweeping statement but now, a market reality across Australia.
Because organisations thought they knew what they wanted from AI. Leaders bought licences, funded pilots and asked teams to experiment.
Insentra saw that enthusiasm first-hand after training users on what they could do with AI.
Companies knew they needed to act and people showed up. They learned about the business use, left with ideas and, in some cases, began trialling projects on their own.
From a distance, all that activity looked like progress.
Of the 4,500 users to attend its complimentary AI enablement sessions, only six customers took the next step.
That’s 0.13% uptake.
“Commercially, it was an unmitigated disaster,” shared Ronnie Altit, CEO of Insentra and now, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Turnium Technology Group.
The result was a wake-up call.
This was at the height of AI enthusiasm in Australia, beginning in late 2024 and continuing through 2025, with the number forcing Altit to reconsider a common assumption about AI adoption: that once people see what the technology can do, they will know how to put it to work.
Attendees left better informed, but returned to businesses that had not identified where AI could help, who should use it or what would happen after the first experiment.
“We spoke to attendees to understand why,” Altit expanded.
“Some left feeling they had learned enough to go and experiment themselves. Others said their organisation wasn’t ready, so they would use ChatGPT or other tools on their own while the business caught up. That feedback told us something important about the gap between individual interest and organisational readiness.
“For much of the market, particularly organisations below around 1,500 seats, readiness remained a challenge. Larger organisations might have research and development funds or vendor support, but the underlying problem was still there.”
That experience led Insentra to build AI Pulse.
Instead of opening with another demonstration of what AI can do, the platform asks people across a business what they do every day, where they struggle and how ready they are to work differently. Their answers give leaders a basis for choosing where to begin.
Insentra became a Microsoft Copilot Jumpstart Partner in late 2023. Early engagements included readiness assessments, which often concluded that customers had more work to do before a rollout.
“At the time, those assessments largely showed that customers weren’t ready,” Altit added.
“They would hear that result and often do nothing next. Microsoft funding could be valuable, but sometimes the attitude was, ‘we’ve got the funding, so let’s spend it.’ If customers weren’t putting their own money behind the work or treating it as part of a wider journey, they weren’t necessarily committed to the outcome.”
The alternative was to find use cases. But that instruction placed a difficult burden on customers who had little experience of AI in their own roles.
“Every partner and customer knew they needed to do something with AI,” Altit said.
“The problem was that they didn’t know what it could do for their business, so they didn’t know where to use it. They would try one thing here and another thing there. My belief is that an organisation won’t get the full benefit unless it transforms how it works.”
Altit encountered that problem personally through his own use of Copilot. After initially using it for Teams meetings, recordings and actions, adoption tailed off after six to eight weeks.
“I wasn’t doing anything else with it,” he acknowledged.
“I didn’t know everything it could do and, more critically, I wasn’t thinking, ‘use Copilot first’. I thought customers would do the same: buy a few licences, give them to senior people without the right enablement, and then see little progress.”
Microsoft then asked its channel partners, including Insentra, to find use cases.
But partners were asking people who didn’t yet know what AI could do for them. Many of the use cases they found were automation based rather than the broader possibilities of generative AI (GenAI).
“It’s super expensive for partners to go and find use cases with customers,” Altit highlighted. “And customers don’t want to pay for a partner to come in and look at all their workflows and the ways to achieve it.”
In other words, Insentra’s training sessions revealed both sides of the gap. People were interested enough to experiment with AI but employers still lacked the evidence to choose a starting point.
Pulse – designed and built in collaboration with Lee Foster as Vice President of AI at Insentra – is designed to make that starting point visible.
The assessment asks individuals about their role, department, current AI use, daily challenges, goals, technical confidence and the tools they already use – taking around 5-15 minutes to complete per person.
This represents the first phase of a five-phase journey:
“In Pulse, someone enters their role, department, current AI usage and what they think they’re spending on AI tools,” Altit explained.
“We then ask about their daily challenges. People sometimes struggle to describe those challenges, so the platform can suggest likely ones based on their role and industry. They can edit those suggestions. It also explains possible AI applications in areas they select, such as content creation, before asking how those applications relate to their own work.”
As people move through the assessment, it explains possible applications in the areas they select. Someone considering content creation, for instance, sees examples of what AI might help produce before deciding whether those examples apply to their own work.
“The process helps people identify opportunities while educating them about what is possible,” Altit added.
“The more they put in, the more customised these become. If they choose the generics, they’re going to get generics. Next, we rate their current maturity, identify the tools they use personally and at work, and say where they want to be in 6-12 months.”
The individual result is only half of Pulse, however.
Insentra also brings responses together so leaders can see which problems recur, where tools are already being used and how experience varies across the workforce.
Altit demonstrated an example in which 16 people identified pain points around automation, content creation and data analysis. The response was immediate – “let’s start there, let’s get those into a cohort and move them into phase two of what we do.”
That is a more specific decision than giving licences to a department because it is enthusiastic, or to senior leaders because they are senior. It identifies people with related work to improve, while leaving room to examine whether AI is the right way to improve it.
Because Pulse also asks where someone wants to be in 6-12 months, the aim is to identify people keen to develop their skills, as well as those who will need more support to see a benefit.
“Now we’re finding a champion in the business who want to be there,” Altit said.
“They’re here now, but they’re a champion so let’s embrace that individual. The distinction changes the training decision too because if someone is already advanced, basic training won’t help them much. If someone is reluctant to use AI, they may need more support to see its value. And if someone wants to become an advanced user, you may have found that champion.”
Altit does not want Pulse to become another assessment that ends with a lengthy report, however. Instead, an AI Momentum journey is available around what happens after an opportunity has been found.
In Ignite, employees work hands-on with selected use cases and return with questions about what they have tried while Accelerate offers continuing support as new practices develop. Scale is for opportunities that call for an application to be built and Operate addresses ongoing management of that work.
The stages can be used according to customer need. They also allow for different technologies and platforms rather than assuming every problem should be solved with Copilot.
“The process has been iterative,” Altit continued.
“We change it regularly based on customer feedback. Pulse grew out of what we learned from the earlier enablement sessions: finding relevant use cases was the central obstacle. Looking at the dashboard now, we’ve had 740 assessments and identified 186 use cases so far.”
Insentra – acquired by Turnium Technology Group in February 2026 – works exclusively through the channel meaning that the Pulse model is partner-led.
The business is currently offering Pulse without charge when it leads into combined work after the assessment. The option to brand the platform for partners is also available.
“Some partners may only want Pulse,” Altit added.
“In that case, we would charge them for licences to use it, because we wouldn’t be doing the later work. If we’re working together on the journey, we can include Pulse as part of the work that leads into the other phases. Partners may build the capability to deliver some of Ignite themselves over time. That’s fine. We can still help them deliver and scale the other parts.
“The platform isn’t tied to one AI product. One customer, for example, wants to work with Claude and also has Copilot. We can look at how those tools fit their needs. I think Copilot will be a strong part of the market, but we start with what the organisation is trying to achieve.”
Beyond this, Altit also advocated that partners run Pulse internally.
“Within the next 2-3 years, managed services businesses could look radically different,” Altit advised.
“AI will automate some of what customers currently buy from them. There will still be a place for partners, but I think more of that value will sit in communication and orchestration.
“Imagine a new MSP built around AI from day one? It may need fewer people to deliver a service and can operate more efficiently. Established MSPs that don’t change will struggle to compete. The same questions apply to professional services businesses.”
Insentra arrived at Pulse after learning that a large audience for AI education did not necessarily become an audience ready to act. The six customers who took the next step out of 4,500 exposed what its sessions could not see: the daily work, differing abilities and unresolved decisions inside each organisation.
“The point I most want to communicate is the human approach,” Altit summarised.
“You can transform an organisation by helping individuals change how they work. But you can’t accomplish all of that through a directive from the top, it has to be from the bottom up.”
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