Assurity Consulting puts quality at core of AI push

Assurity Consulting has set out its approach to adopting artificial intelligence across its business and client work, arguing that quality controls must be built in from the outset.

Co-Founder and Managing Director Garth Hamilton said the New Zealand consultancy is reshaping training, delivery and internal systems as AI changes the pace of software development and business operations.

Hamilton described AI as a major commercial opportunity, but said companies risk creating new operational problems if they treat quality assurance as a final check rather than a design principle. He said faster software development, wider use of internal AI tools and the rise of AI agents would increase the need for stronger evaluation, oversight and data protection.

Assurity has spent more than two decades working on digital projects for more than 250 large organisations in New Zealand, mainly in software testing and digital engineering. Hamilton said that experience has shaped its view that businesses should prioritise reliability and stability as they introduce AI into products and workflows.

Human oversight

Hamilton rejected the phrase "human in the loop", often used to describe a person reviewing or approving AI outputs.

"I absolutely hate the term 'human in the loop.' It treats people as an afterthought. It treats people as a safety valve for the AI machine. Everything will be all right, because there's a human in the loop," said Garth Hamilton, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Assurity Consulting.

Instead, he said, the company prefers what he called an expert-driven AI loop, in which people direct systems rather than simply sign off their work at the end of a process.

"We strongly believe in the expert-driven AI loop. Humans steering AI to give us the outcomes that we need, steering us to get the optimal output. So our AI agents are not going to replace our consulting experts, they're going to free them up, allowing them to focus on the really important parts of projects, which is the human side, the human element," Hamilton said.

That view reflects a wider debate in the corporate technology market over whether AI tools should be treated mainly as productivity aids or as systems requiring formal governance. Hamilton's comments suggest Assurity is seeking to position AI within established consulting work rather than as a standalone automation layer.

Training model

The company has also changed how it trains staff as AI tools evolve. Hamilton said Assurity identified early adopters within the business and used them to create peer-led awareness and training programmes.

Those staff members were first organised as "AI evangelists" and later as a smaller group of "AI enablers". They ran lunch-and-learn sessions, built an internal chat community and recorded material in Workday Learning for wider use across the business.

Hamilton said the approach was designed to move faster than traditional corporate training, which can struggle to keep pace with rapid changes in AI products and practices. He added that the company used gamified learning methods to encourage staff to test tools, compare results and share lessons.

"As a result, our AI chat community became the most active in the business and after every training course, we could just see the uptake of AI increase," Hamilton said.

He added that Assurity has been trialling new AI approaches with clients as well as internally, feeding what it learns back into its delivery methods. The aim, he said, is to create a self-reinforcing learning model rather than a one-off training effort.

System backbone

Hamilton also linked the company's AI plans to its back-office systems. He said Assurity chose Workday because it could combine finance, projects, human capital management and learning on one platform, rather than relying on separate applications.

Assurity believes it was the first company in New Zealand to implement the full Workday suite, including Finance, Projects, HCM and Learning. Hamilton said that gave the consultancy a single source of truth across consultants, clients, services and regions.

He argued that this matters for AI because fragmented systems can make it harder to maintain reliable data, monitor work and support staff development. By contrast, a unified system can connect billing, project information and training records to individual consultants and management reporting.

"Workday, when we went looking, was the only system that didn't require us to stitch together separate applications. I understand we were the first company in New Zealand to actually integrate or to implement the full Workday suite: Finance, Projects, HCM and Learning. Because that gave us a simple, single source of truth that was centred around our people, our clients, our services and our regions," Hamilton said.

Hamilton framed the company's AI strategy as an operational change rather than a narrow technology deployment. "The future does not have to be risky: focus on quality, focus on trust, find your own way to move at the speed of AI and build the trust of your customers and staff. Make that future with reliability and stability in mind," he said.