Macquarie BFS trains staff for AI agent integration

Macquarie Banking and Financial Services (BFS) is proactively training its workforce to adapt to the future integration of agentic AI into various workflows. The organization is currently running five or six proofs-of-concept (POCs) to explore how AI can enhance productivity by reducing administrative tasks and enabling higher-value work.

Key Developments

• Training Programs: BFS recently conducted prompt engineering training to equip staff with skills needed for AI interaction. The goal is to democratize AI capabilities across the organization.
• Agent-Ready Outputs: Teams are being trained to produce outputs that AI agents can easily interpret, minimizing potential hallucinations from unstructured data.
• Slack as a Digital HQ: Slack serves as the central hub for communication and collaboration, integrating with tools like Atlassian and Microsoft to streamline workflows.

(L-R) Stephanie Hoople, head of customer success ANZ/ASEAN at Slack and Shaun Kamler, head of control tower, banking and financial services group at Macquarie Group

Challenges and Lessons

• Integration Failures: Not all Slack integrations have succeeded. For example, a leave approval process integration was underutilized, prompting a reevaluation of value-added features.
• Enterprise-Wide AI: BFS is experimenting with enterprise search to unify structured and unstructured data, aiming to improve organizational agility.

Strategic Partnerships

BFS is collaborating with a select group of technology partners, including Salesforce (Service Cloud, Sales Cloud) and Slack, to co-create AI solutions. The focus is on employee and customer experience enhancements, though current efforts are primarily internal.

Shaun Kamler, head of control tower at BFS, emphasized the need for teams to adapt their communication styles to work effectively with AI agents. "We expect teams of agents throughout the organization in ways we don’t yet know," he said.

For more details, visit Salesforce and Slack.