{"id":777618,"date":"2026-07-03T12:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T12:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/777618\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T12:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T12:32:08","slug":"with-ai-costs-rising-companies-are-hiring-experts-to-answer-a-crucial-question-is-it-worth-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/777618\/","title":{"rendered":"With AI costs rising, companies are hiring experts to answer a crucial question: Is it worth it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Workers sort and bag cereal at the Farm Girl warehouse in Mississauga, Ont. The company uses AI to keep track of its product as many other companies are still experimenting with AI and have yet to integrate it into core operations.Galit Rodan\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

It\u2019s often said that Canadian companies have been slow<\/a> to adopt artificial intelligence<\/a>. But at Safe Software Inc., adoption might be going a little too well. <\/p>\n

Six months ago, the Surrey, B.C., company was spending about $20,000 a month on AI tools such as Claude Code and ChatGPT for its 370 or so employees. But as usage has grown, so too have the costs. It\u2019s now spending about $100,000 a month \u2013 a five-fold increase in just a few months.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really want to get this under control, because that\u2019s over a million a year,\u201d said co-founder and chief executive officer Don Murray. These costs wouldn\u2019t be so much of an issue, he said, if Safe Software had a clear picture of the return-on-investment, but that\u2019s fuzzy in some cases.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of the reasons Safe Software recently hired a director of AI to better determine how employees should be using these tools and nail down the benefits, financial or otherwise, of all that spending. \u201cI want to make sure there\u2019s an ROI,\u201d Mr. Murray said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the only Canadian company hiring people to bring more rigour and metrics to generative AI adoption. Browse job postings these days and you\u2019re likely to see many \u201cAI enablement\u201d positions. EY Canada, Air Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia, Ontario Teachers\u2019 Pension Plan, Coveo and Sage Recruiting have all sought folks to lead or work on wringing value from AI tools and find the right use cases.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for job search site Indeed in Canada said that terms such as \u201cAI enablement\u201d are showing up far more often than a year ago, though it remains a very niche role. <\/p>\n

2025: Canadian CEOs are embracing generative AI for its speed and efficiency, and expect employees to get on board \u2013 or else<\/a><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, some companies that make AI software are embedding staff with customers to build custom applications, which is typically called forward-deployed engineering. OpenAI purchased a consulting and engineering firm this year and launched a new business called the OpenAI Deployment Company to work with clients on bespoke solutions. Ottawa-based supply chain software company Kinaxis Inc. is building teams to install with its clients, too. Manik Sharma, chief of agentic solutions at Kinaxis, described it as a new way to work with customers, \u201crather than selling software and walking away.\u201d<\/p>\n

The practice of forward-deployed engineering is not just about helping companies deal with technological issues around AI. \u201cYou\u2019re adopting the need to shift the culture and change the way work is done,\u201d said Charbel Safadi, CEO of Zafin in Toronto, which makes AI tools for regulated industries. \u201cIf you don\u2019t reimagine the work, you\u2019re going to see what\u2019s happening in the marketplace right now, which is significant cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Studies have been mixed on whether companies are experiencing the promised benefits of AI yet. A KPMG poll<\/a> last fall of more than 750 executives in Canada found that just 2 per cent said they were seeing results in the form of productivity or cost savings. That\u2019s partly because many companies are still experimenting with AI and have yet to integrate it into core operations.<\/p>\n

Such futzing around can come at a cost, however. Uber Technologies Inc. blew through its AI budget<\/a> just a few months into the year because employees were using Claude Code so much. The company\u2019s president said later<\/a> there is no clear link between AI usage and better service for customers. Meta Platforms Inc., meanwhile, is taking steps to rein in usage<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The most intense corporate users of AI tools, about 1 per cent of companies, are spending US$7,450 per employee per month on the technology, according to data<\/a> from U.S. financial software company Ramp. That\u2019s about half the monthly salary of a software engineer. The gap in spending is large, however. The top 10 per cent of firms spend US$610 per employee per month, while the median amount is just US$11.<\/p>\n

Canadian employers are paying the price after AI proves unable to replace laid off staff<\/a><\/p>\n

Some companies are comfortable with rising spend. Shopify Inc. noted increased costs during its May earnings call as merchants made use of the company\u2019s AI tools. But chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister said \u201cwe\u2019re seeing significant benefits,\u201d while another executive said more than 50 per cent of the code at the company is now written by AI.<\/p>\n

Still, other companies are taking a more targeted approach, either to deal with rising costs or prevent them from spiralling out of control in the first place. After the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, many companies dispatched their IT departments to secure enterprise subscriptions for these tools to let controlled experiments flourish \u2013 with mixed results. \u201cThe practical application of AI ended up being more complicated than people thought,\u201d said Louis Tetu, executive chairman at Montreal-based software company Coveo Solutions Inc. \u201cBoards and management teams are getting impatient.\u201d <\/p>\n

Coveo is essentially an AI company, and sells AI-powered search and product recommendation tools to companies. It\u2019s the kind of place where managers have to justify why AI can\u2019t do a job before hiring someone new. Even so, the company recently posted a job for an AI enablement lead to \u201cguide leaders toward the most meaningful AI opportunities while ensuring responsible, aligned adoption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coveo had to crack down on AI use, too. \u201cWe did put a stop on everybody firing up every model any time to do whatever, because we saw the bills come in,\u201d Mr. Tetu said. \u201cNot everybody needs the latest version of Claude for every workload.\u201d<\/p>\n

Safe Software has not had to dial back access, though Mr. Murray said it\u2019s an option if costs spiral. With the arrival of the company\u2019s new AI director in June, Mehdi Ghotboddini, that might not be necessary, however. He previously worked in data science and analytics roles at a health care provider, and over the next while at Safe, he\u2019ll identify the highest-priority uses and come up with the metrics to judge success. Productivity might not be the only one. \u201cIt\u2019s not as simple as saying how much of an employee\u2019s time is saved,\u201d Mr. Ghotboddini said. \u201cIt\u2019s how we can evaluate quality, measure speed and customer value.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can AI be steered by anything but profit? OpenAI trial offers clues, but no verdict<\/a><\/p>\n

At EY Canada, chief technology officer Biren Agnihotri has been adding adoption and enablement specialists to help scale internal tools to employees. \u201cThey are very important,\u201d he said. \u201cThey help turn AI potential into real productivity and client value.\u201d<\/p>\n

The firm has created a few roles that didn\u2019t exist a few years ago, in fact. In addition to adoption specialists, which is more of a change management role, EY Canada has been seeking people to create training materials for AI tools, others to design and monitor workflows for agents, and finance professionals to keep tabs on the costs and benefits.<\/p>\n

Given how quickly AI is changing and the uncertainty around how the technology will affect labour, it\u2019s possible some of these new roles might not be necessary in a few years. Mr. Agnihotri pointed out that EY has some 100 AI use cases in production and more in development. \u201cIt\u2019s giving us that level of confidence that these roles are going to be long-standing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Scotiabank unveiled a custom-built AI platform called Scotia Intelligence that relies on a variety of models and allows employees to build agents to take care of some office-related tasks, among other features. Now, it\u2019s hiring AI enablement engineers to work on the platform and help employees make use of it. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe basically hold their hand as they come along this journey, and then we have a better shot of consistency and success,\u201d said Valli Musti, senior vice-president of enterprise data and AI platforms. Employees have been submitting ideas for use cases, and every week her team meets to discuss what can be acted on.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Jennifer Boville, founder and CEO of Farm Girl, says her company hired a head of AI enablement who led the development of a tool that pulls together information from across the company and replaced some existing software it was using.Galit Rodan\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only companies steeped in traditional office work seeking AI enablement help. Farm Girl, which manufacturers sugar-free cereals from a factory in Mississauga, hired one a few months ago. AI adoption had been ad hoc, with the company using ChatGPT and Claude at the office. \u201cIt definitely saved time, but we were quickly realizing we needed to go a level deeper,\u201d said CEO Jennifer Boville. <\/p>\n

Farm Girl brought in a head of AI enablement a few months ago, who led the development of an AI platform that pulls together information from across the company, including the factory. \u201cIt gives us this dashboard that has visibility into all of the critical metrics we\u2019re watching in real time, because our factory runs 24 hours a day,\u201d she said. It\u2019s also replaced some existing software Farm Girl was using.<\/p>\n

But how would the company quantify the benefits? That\u2019s still a bit tricky. Ms. Boville thinks about it like this: Without real-time information from the factory, staff might not be able to intervene if something is amiss, leading to a spoiled batch of cereal. \u201cIt\u2019s a savings of time, it\u2019s a savings of money,\u201d she said. \u201cSome of these things are hard to quantify, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

With reports from Sean Silcoff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Workers sort and bag cereal at the Farm Girl warehouse in Mississauga, Ont.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":777619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,901,276,277,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-777618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alberta","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}