A.I. Beyond the Hype – Microsoft’s Katie Scott talks to the HRIA
As AI moves from buzzword to business tool, Hire businesses are asking what it means for their people, customers and margins.
ACROSS THE COUNTRY, AI IS reshaping how quotes are processed, fleets are managed, risks are controlled and staff are onboarded. Microsoft ANZ Director for Customer Success, Katie Scott, talks to Hire and Rental magazine about some practical first steps, common guardrails and why humans will remain in the driver’s seat.
Hire & Rental (H&R): Katie, for a typical SME in the hire sector that may not have explored the potential of AI, where do they start?
Katie Scott (KS): I’d suggest two very practical first steps and the first costs nothing but time. Get your best branch manager, ops manager or senior coordinator in a room for 90 minutes and list the 10 things that cause the most friction in your business. That might be quote turnaround times, damage disputes, after-hours enquiries, finding the right service manual or safety and compliance paperwork. Rank each by frequency multiplied by pain, and your top three become your AI roadmap. The second step is about everyday adoption. Give your employees access to a simple AI chat tool, such as Copilot chat, and at least 30 minutes of basic training in the first year. You’ll learn far more from your people using a simple tool daily than from a six‑month project nobody asked for.
H&R: You’ve described AI as a ‘workplace multiplier’. What does that mean in a hire context?
KS: There’s a lot of hands-on, physical work in this industry that is fundamentally human and will remain human. AI is not going to turn up at 6am to hose down a bobcat, load a trailer, diagnose a hydraulic fault by ear or talk a stressed customer down in a damage dispute. What AI can do is handle repeatable, routine tasks. In a hire business that could be quoting, chasing paperwork, hunting for manuals and doing after-hours triage. None of that replaces a person, but it does increase their capacity to perform other tasks.
H&R: Many long-serving staff may be worried AI will replace their jobs. How should leaders address that fear honestly?
KS: Be concrete about what’s changing, so start with what AI genuinely can’t do. In this industry, that’s the hands-on skills and hard‑won judgement of experienced people that can’t be replicated by technology. AI can do is the ‘admin tax’, which, for most people, is a part of the day they’d be happy to give up. So, the message isn’t nothing will change; it’s that their role will evolve towards more of the work they’re good at and less of the grind. It’s also critical that leaders go first. If managers quietly avoid using AI while mandating it for everyone else, trust collapses. When the boss is visibly experimenting, learning and even getting it wrong sometimes, it signals ‘we’re doing this together’.
H&R: Beyond invoicing, which admin-heavy processes are you seeing AI transform?
KS: Three stand out that share a similar profile: high volume, low judgement and a clear ‘before-and-after’ that employees can feel quickly.
- Quote-to-contract automation: by automating email handoffs and routine steps, a mid-size hire operator we worked with in the US cut the time from quote-to-contract from four hours to 11 minutes. Customers notice that speed and your win rate often improve.
- Safety and compliance paperwork: think inductions, manuals and maintenance sign-offs where finding information on servicing equipment safely can go from a 10-minute hunt to a five‑second answer. That’s low-friction and improves consistency.
- Damage assessment: we’ve seen businesses turn a photo of damage into a cost-of-repair estimate in under a minute. That shortens disputes, reduces write‑off and removes some of the emotion from those conversations.
H&R: How can AI agents help with utilisation and pricing in traditional equipment fleets?
KS: AI can quietly watch those data points that no human has time to monitor. For example, if a machine has sat idle for days at one branch while another branch has turned away six enquiries for similar gear; an AI agent can flag a redeployment decision immediately. On the pricing side, agents can sense when utilisation on a category is tightening — due to major projects, holiday weekends or wet seasons — and recommend rate adjustments before stock runs out.
Pair that with predictive servicing, where utilisation and telemetry data flag a machine for maintenance before it fails on a customer site, and you’re lifting utilisation while protecting revenue. However, this only works if your underlying fleet and hire data is reasonably clean. And always keep a human in the loop, because while the AI agent can make a recommendation, a local decision-maker has to approve.
H&R: What should a practical AI usage policy for hire businesses include?
KS: We distil responsible AI into six principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, transparency, accountability and inclusiveness. For small- to mid-sized hire businesses, I’d also call out four non‑negotiables:
- Data privacy. No sensitive customer, employee or commercial data goes into untrusted public tools. Use only approved tools where you know your data isn’t being used to train public models.
- Human accountability. AI output is always a draft, and a named person checks anything going to a customer or touching safety. The tool assists, the human owns the decision.
- Transparency. Be clear internally (and where necessary, with customers) about where AI is in the loop.
- Approved tools and training. Maintain a simple approved tools list and train people on how to use them. A policy no one understands is just shelfware. Your AI usage policy should only be one to two pages max. The longer it is, the less likely anyone is to read it.
H&R: What immediate AI-driven change would a hire customer notice at the counter, on the phone or online?
KS: There are two big ones: the speed of quoting and the speed and reliability of first response, especially after-hours. Instead of a Saturday enquiry sitting in someone’s inbox until Monday, a Copilot Studio agent connected to your fleet data can deliver an accurate availability and rate response in seconds and on the same channels customers already use. In a competitive market, that can be the difference between winning the booking and losing it to the operator
who simply replied first.
You can read more about Microsoft’s principles and approach to responsible AI at: Microsoft.com/en-qu/ai/principles-and-approach
