Interactive turns AI inward as ‘Customer Zero’ in company-wide transformation

Sydney, Australia - 24 August 2026 - Interactive Australia has launched a company‑wide artificial intelligence adoption program, positioning itself as 'Customer Zero' as it embeds AI into its own operations ahead of taking new capabilities to market.

Designed as a practical, whole‑of‑business initiative, the program brings together technical specialists with Interactive's People and Culture teams. It spans AI skills development, data and architecture uplift, and workflow redesign, with a clear focus on helping teams adopt AI in ways that are relevant, safe and repeatable in their day‑to‑day work.

Rather than treating AI as a standalone technology program, Interactive has embedded adoption into how work gets done, ensuring new capabilities are understood, tested and refined internally before being applied with customers.

Lizzy Jones, Head of Data and AI is leading the next phase of Interactive's Data & AI capability, building on the organisation's Customer Zero program to scale its impact beyond internal adoption.

Having played a central role in developing the capability internally, Lizzy has helped prove value, mature Interactive's delivery model, and build confidence in how AI can be applied safely and effectively in real-world environments.

In her role, she is now focused on taking these proven approaches to market - supporting customers with experience‑led guidance and delivering AI outcomes that are practical, repeatable and grounded in real operational use.

"AI is everywhere right now, but the real difference comes from making it useful," Jones said. "That means designing solutions around real workflows, not abstract ideas. For example, our procurement team is now onboarding vendors and suppliers around 20 per cent faster by using clearly defined, repeatable processes supported by enterprise AI agents."

Jones continued "By testing and refining these solutions ourselves, we gain practical insight that enables us to provide informed, experience‑led guidance to customers. Our AI integration and system design work has the real-world experience informing what we build with customers."

Interactive has set a target for 80 per cent of employees to complete its internal AI certification literacy program by the end of FY26, underscoring a company‑wide commitment to upskilling its workforce for an AI‑enabled future. As part of this effort, hundreds of staff are already using AI‑powered tools in their day‑to‑day work, from meeting summarisation and research through to operational and service delivery workflows.

The company also introduced a series of internal initiatives to accelerate adoption, including "AI Playground" sessions where employees demonstrate practical applications and productivity gains to colleagues across the business. These initiatives provide a strong shared-learning forum and have been curated to be relevant across business units and experience levels, encouraging staff to knowledge-share and try new things.

This practical approach is already delivering measurable operational benefits for customers. Interactive has applied AI directly within its Security Operations Centres (SOCs), embedding AI‑assisted triage and investigation workflows alongside workforce upskilling. As a result, average threat detection and response times have been reduced from 40 minutes to just seven, enabling faster containment of threats for customers while allowing analysts to focus on higher‑value investigation and response activities. Routine assessment is accelerated through AI‑supported workflows, reducing dwell time and improving overall security outcomes for customer environments.

Christina Anthony, Head of Learning and Development, says Interactive's AI Certification Program is deliberately designed to address the cultural and people impacts of AI adoption, not just the technology itself. As AI changes workflows and ways of working, the program helps employees build confidence, develop practical skills and navigate change that can otherwise be disruptive or uncertain.

"AI adoption is as much a people challenge as it is a technology challenge," Anthony said.

"Our focus has been keeping the human in AI. We want employees to see it as an extension of their own capability - supporting both their day‑to‑day effectiveness and their long‑term career development."

Through the initiative, Interactive has formed a network of internal AI Guides and AI Champions across business units, helping teams identify opportunities to automate processes, improve productivity and experiment safely with new AI-powered tools.

"What we're seeing is confidence grows very quickly once people have the opportunity to experiment," Anthony explains. "When employees can try AI in a safe, supported environment, they begin to see how it can remove friction from everyday work. Our role is to give them the skills, guardrails and encouragement to explore those possibilities."

To continue the momentum in adoption and AI skills development following the "Customer Zero" program, Interactive is also developing a library of secure internal AI agents to streamline tasks such as research, service desk support and knowledge retrieval. By experimenting, testing and deploying AI‑powered tools internally, Interactive is building a grounded, real‑world approach to AI consulting informed by lived experience across people, process and technology.

ENDS