For the last two years the AI revolution has been unescapable for businesses.
Fuelled by the creation of ChatGPT, generative AI has, overnight, turned into a critical ingredient for success, competitiveness, and efficiency.
Organisations of all sizes raced to put AI initiatives in place and embed it into daily operations. Fast forward to 2025 and those AI ambitions are now a reality. With 78% of organisations using AI in at least one business function, AI initiatives are re-shaping the business landscape.
However, whilst generative AI is the shiny new toy in businesses toolkits, many employees have been using AI for years, having seen it seamlessly integrated into many everyday tools such as Siri or Google Maps.
For employees so accustomed to AI tools in their personal lives, the challenge for businesses isn’t only leveraging AI to say ahead of competitors and streamline operations, it’s also ensuring that AI tools meet employee demands and expectations — improving productivity and employee experience.
As such, this piece will explore how businesses can best adopt AI to meet employee needs whilst looking at how it is reshaping business operations.
What does an AI-driven workplace look like?
In 2025, AI is no longer an experiment. Companies have moved beyond testing and are deploying AI at scale. Agentic AI chatbots can now recommend products and complete transactions autonomously, while AI-powered fraud prevention help detect and prevent scams. AI isn’t just emerging—it’s here. According to McKinsey, five forces are defining AI in the workplace in 2025: improved intelligence and reasoning, agentic AI enabling autonomous robot workers, multimodality that integrates text, audio, and video, and increased transparency through better reasoning and clearer explanations of its processes. Workers are using AI to be more creative. A report by Deloitte found that 70% of workers are open to offloading tasks to AI to free up time and boost creativity, yet 28% worry about technology threatening their jobs. AI is both a blessing and a curse—while it reduces mundane work, it also raises concerns about job security.
And better reasoning is giving businesses more confidence in AI models. Looking back on AI’s early days, many remember its tendency toward bias and its ability to confidently present falsehoods. To address this, large language models are increasingly including explanations of their reasoning or cite sources. A notable example is China’s DeepSeek model, which impressed with its whitepaper outlining the importance of reasoning in large language models.
Then there’s the rise of AI-powered tools in Enterprise Content management Systems (ECM), making document management smarter and more intuitive. People are so accustomed to AI in their daily lives—whether it’s Google Maps or Alexa—that they expect similar automation at work. These systems don’t just organise and secure business data; they also streamline tedious processes like onboarding and contract management. By automating routine paperwork, AI is freeing employees to focus on more creative, high-value tasks.
Like all technological change, there’s a lot happening, and this is just scratching the surface, but those who can harness AI stand to gain a lot. According to McKinsey, the long-term opportunity that AI presents in added productivity growth from corporate use cases is around $4.4 trillion.
Combatting AI risk with enterprise content management systems
But it’s not all good news. While AI has boosted business efficiency, it has also made malicious cyber activity more prolific and dangerous. Threat actors are using AI to automate attacks, develop advanced phishing and social engineering tactics, and are leveraging deepfakes and generative AI tech to deceive employees and exploit vulnerabilities more efficiently. In response, businesses in 2025 are locking down their data and investing more heavily in information governance.
This is part of the reason businesses are assessing their records management practices and ECMs. Because cyber attackers are finding increasingly sophisticated ways to exploit data, businesses are locking down the attack surface by securing their data and documents, and ensuring the proper access controls and audit trails are in place. ECMs help organisations centralise digital sensitive documents, providing version control and enhanced security.
Another factor driving businesses toward ECM is data integrity. AI is only as powerful as the data it’s trained on, yet 67% of organisations admit they don’t fully trust their own data for decision-making. Proper data indexing not only improves AI performance today but also lays the foundation for future scalability. These systems allow for automated document management, ensuring data remains structured and accessible.
The business balancing act: human and tech collaboration
AI in 2025 is a lot like hybrid work: by balancing automation with human oversight, businesses and workers can reap the benefits of efficiency while reducing mundane tasks.
Certainly, there are some risks. While AI is freeing employees from routine tasks and enabling more strategic work, some roles are shifting toward refinement and review of AI output—raising concerns that critical thinking skills could erode in the process. At the same time, some businesses that have made big bets on AI aren’t yet seeing the expected returns. This is because we’re only just exiting the pilot phase. Almost 90% of business leaders anticipate that AI will drive revenue growth in the next three years.
Businesses that automate their business processes using tools like ECMs — which can support the quick rollout of automated solutions with drag-and-drop tools or prebuilt templates — have more time to train their staff. According to a report by IBM, 62% of organisations are already using AI to
personalise learning content for employees, leading to a more engaging and effective training experience, keeps their critical thinking skills sharp and ensuring they’re ready for further digital transformation.
Businesses are only just touching the surface of AI’s true potential. However, to get the most out of this technology, it must be underpinned by something greater, and that is skilled talent to drive this transition forward.
Interestingly, millennials — the largest generational cohort in the workforce — are one of the strongest advocates for AI use. They are quickly becoming a driving force in bolstering AI adoption as they begin to step into leadership positions. However, no matter their generational makeup, organisations that focus on employee training and ensure their teams have the skills to harness AI effectively are already reaping the rewards in 2025.
About the Author
Mark Eyden is Director of Partner Development, EMEA at Laserfiche. Laserfiche is the leading enterprise platform that helps organizations digitally transform operations and manage their content with AI-powered solutions. Accelerating how business gets done.
