Build vs Buy: What Should Your Business Own in AI?

Build vs Buy: What Should Your Business Own in AI? What should your business build with AI versus buy? What is too strategically important to hand over?

The answer depends on where you create value, what data makes you different, and which parts of the AI stack are becoming commodity infrastructure.

In this episode of Applied AI Australia, powered by Acquire Intelligence, Ramon Rodriguez speaks with Rudi Khoury, Chief Digital Officer at Fisher & Paykel, about making that decision inside a real enterprise.

Fisher & Paykel has more than 90 years of organisational knowledge. Its AI work includes making roughly 35,000 documents and 100GB of information usable, applying AI across hundreds of thousands of customer enquiries, and deciding which capabilities to own versus where external technology and partners make sense.

The results discussed include:

• AI resolving around 60-80% of enquiries across targeted use cases

• A double-digit reduction in contact-centre volume

• AI-agent volume increasing roughly fourfold

• Decades of product and organisational knowledge made accessible to AI

• Customer experience measured through satisfaction and effort, not just traditional NPS

• How to decide what AI capability to build, buy or access through a partner

• Why build versus buy is not one enterprise-wide decision

• Identifying the layers of AI where ownership matters

• Why proprietary data, product knowledge and customer experience change the equation

• What Fisher & Paykel learned from turning 90+ years of knowledge into usable AI context

• How AI is used across hundreds of thousands of customer enquiries

• Why resolution rate, customer satisfaction and effort matter more than measuring AI adoption

• Why narrowing the scope of an AI agent can improve customer experience

• How privacy and customer data affect build-versus-buy decisions

• Why businesses should avoid rebuilding technology layers that are rapidly becoming commodities

• How hackathons build internal AI capability even when technology is bought externally

• What part of this differentiates us?

• What proprietary data, knowledge or customer experience sits underneath it?

• Do we need to own that layer, or control how it is used?

• What could a specialist partner or platform do better than us?

• If the underlying model changes dramatically in 12 months, what have we built that still matters?

The bigger leadership question is where your organisation creates unique value - and how much control you need over the AI that touches it.

Your 48-hour action:

Choose one significant AI initiative already being discussed inside your organisation and ask:

• Chapters00:00 Build vs buy: the decision every executive is about to face

• 01:00 Where Fisher & Paykel is focusing its AI strategy

• 04:38 More than 90 years of organisational knowledge

• 05:06 Making roughly 100GB of information usable by AI

• 06:35 AI handling hundreds of thousands of customer enquiries

• 06:56 Resolution rates of around 60-80%

• 07:14 Double-digit reduction in contact-centre volume

• 07:18 AI-agent volume increasing approximately fourfold

• 09:18 Measuring AI with customer satisfaction and effort

• 10:35 Rudi’s framework for deciding build versus buy

• 14:10 Why narrowing the scope of an AI agent can improve the experience

• 14:51 Privacy, customer data and changing Australian obligations

• 17:30 Where AI should sit inside the organisation

• 20:48 What rapidly changing AI models mean for businesses building today

• 24:52 Why hackathons have been one of Fisher & Paykel’s most powerful AI initiatives

• 27:28 Final takeaways: know what you own and where your value sits

Applied AI Australia is powered by Acquire Intelligence.

We help Australian companies turn AI investment into measurable business value, deciding what to fund, what work must change, where value should land and who owns the result.

Get in touch - https://www.appliedaiaustralia.com.au/book-briefing

Ramon: linkedin.com/in/ramonrod

Guest: Rudi Khoury, Chief Digital Officer, Fisher & Paykel