Australian Businesses Favor AI for Back-Office Tasks Over Software Building

Anthropic's head in Australia, Theo Hourmouzis, revealed on August 24 that the company's Claude AI model is primarily used for back-office tasks by Australian customers. Speaking at an event for National Australia Bank Ltd., Hourmouzis stated that 5.8% of Claude's usage in Australia is dedicated to basic tasks such as invoicing, inventory management, and general administration, compared to 4.7% globally.

Hourmouzis noted that Australian users tend to over-index on back-office, pragmatic work with Claude, while under-indexing on coding applications. The PYMNTS Intelligence report "Wholesale Writes the AI Playbook: How Goods Firms Are Scaling Intelligence Across the Enterprise" found that wholesale firms primarily use AI for contract and proposal generation, security monitoring and threat detection, and revenue recognition and close support.

Hourmouzis suggested that there is an opportunity for Australian businesses to use Claude to build software tailored to their needs, as these core business processes traditionally require specialized human expertise. Anthropic recently announced the release of the Claude for Small Business plugin, which integrates AI-powered capabilities into tools commonly used by small businesses like Canva, Docusign, Google Workspace, HubSpot, Microsoft 365, PayPal, and QuickBooks.

The plugin is designed to handle post-work tasks like planning payroll, chasing invoices, and initiating marketing projects. Examples of AI adoption include a marketing agency cutting down on hours spent generating invoices and chasing payments, and a coffee roaster's COO discovering previously unnoticed operational issues.