Ethics, return on investment are key to nailing the benefits of AITechnologyOne has unveiled Plus, an AI system built in Brisbane, as the firm warns Australia must avoid repeating a decade of costly technology failures.Damon KitneyTechnologyOne recently unveiled Plus, a whole-of-enterprise agentic AI system built entirely in Brisbane.Gift this article3 min read12:00AMDecember 12, 2025Australia has a rare opportunity to reset its approach to technology implementation and avoid repeating a decade of costly failures ­before a new wave of artificial intelligence-driven spending in the sector, according to TechnologyOne.The firm’s chief technologist, Chandan Potukuchi, says AI will only deliver on its promise if it is implemented responsibly and rooted in solving genuine organisational problems.If the public and private sectors can get the implementation right, he says he believes the future could look very different to the past decade of “overpromising and underdelivering”.“AI for us is not a hammer looking for a nail. We are focused on return on investment (ROI) and safety, above all. That is what customers are responding to,” Mr Potukuchi says.As governments and corporations prepare to spend billions of dollars on new AI-powered technology solutions, he says the early evidence is stark: most projects launched during the hype of the past three years have failed to ­deliver meaningful business outcomes.“ROI should be obvious, but if you look at reports in the wake of the hype of recent years, AI projects have delivered disappointment,” he says. “They have not been addressing real, core business problems. That was our starting point.“We start with a principle that AI brings the intelligence and ­people bring the empathy and the ethics.”It is against this backdrop that TechnologyOne recently unveiled Plus, a whole-of-enterprise agentic AI system built entirely in Brisbane and set to be rolled out to its public-sector and enterprise customers globally.Plus – described internally as a platform that can “predict, learn, uncover and simplify” – sits across every module of Technology­One’s cloud platform.Its natural language interface draws on an organisation’s own data, allowing staff to ask questions, issue commands, analyse complex information or predict trends from a single screen.TechnologyOne CEO Ed Chung has said the efficiencies ­offered for universities, councils, government agencies and other public-service organisations were “literally incalculable”.Something as routine as issuing a request for approval – currently a multi-step navigation exercise ­requiring specific data inputs – can be completed with a single ­sentence.At the other end of the spectrum, multifaceted financial or workforce analyses can be generated instantly and presented in clear graphical form. Instead of scattering information across dozens of functional silos – finance, HR, budgeting, ­assets, procurement – the agentic AI engine of Plus pulls hundreds of thousands of data points together, providing insights and recommendations in real time.It can even identify emerging patterns weeks or months before they become visible through traditional reporting.“From the most mundane and repetitive tasks to critical management functions, Plus will revolutionise all aspects of running an organisation, delivering not only cost savings but supporting better and more successful organisations from the day it is turned on,” Mr Chung says.Underpinning Plus is TechnologyOne’s “Defence in Depth’’ security architecture. The firm is one of the few in the world to meet the new ISO 42001:2023 standard for AI management systems.At its core, the system enforces a “human in the loop” design to keep human judgment at the centre of automated tasks.For years the large global consulting firms have pushed Australian government and corporate clients into over-engineered technology transformations that too often have been destined to fail.Most of these structures were built in an era when software ­arrived in boxes and hardware ­required armies of installers. In a world of cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), they no longer make sense.The consequences have been devastating across both the public and private sectors: major projects running over budget, systems going live years late, and promised benefits failing to materialise.TechnologyOne says Australia must break this cycle if it wants to lift national productivity. The first step is to unwind the entrenched dependence on external consultants whose incentives are misaligned with local outcomes.TechnologyOne’s success story illustrates the potential of the ICT sector to drive economic growth when the right frameworks are in place.The company’s SaaS platform has revolutionised the software implementation process, delivering faster, more efficient solutions that benefit its customers and reducing the risks associated with technology implementation.The transformation was made possible through the adoption of TechnologyOne’s innovative SaaS+ implementation methodology, a model that has set new standards in the delivery of enterprise resource planning systems, especially within the public sector.SaaS+ is an innovative model that combines the benefits of traditional SaaS with a comprehensive, full-service approach to system implementation. Under this model, TechnologyOne takes on full responsibility for not just the initial set-up and deployment of the solution but also the ongoing operation, support and future upgrades of the system, all for a fixed annual fee. This has radically shifted the burden of risk from the customer to the provider, ensuring on-time and on-budget delivery.Read related topics:Back AustraliaDamon KitneyColumnistDamon Kitney has spent three decades in financial journalism, including 16 years at The Australian Financial Review and 12 years as Victorian business editor at The Australian. He specialises in writing the untold personal stories of the nation's richest and most private people and now has his own writing and advisory business, DMK Publishing. He has published three books, The Price of Fortune: The Untold Story of being James Packer; The Inner Sanctum, and The Fortune Tellers.@DamonKitneyMore related storiesSponsored ContentBuy into Australian-made before we get left behindThe era of ‘buy from wherever’ government spending has ended as Australia joins a global sprint to protect national interests, with procurement policies now weaponised against foreign dependency.Read moreSponsored ContentLocal tech expertise will minimise riskFour Aussie tech giants unite to prove local beats global after bureaucrats routinely snub purpose-built solutions for familiar international brands.Read more