How Cario is bringing focus to its AI journey

Q1: What does Cario do and what is your role in the business?

Matt: We simplify logistics for businesses that send freight. Cario is freight management software that integrates with customers’ ERPs and connects to more than 280 carriers to streamline logistics operations. It also allows you to manage your own fleet through its TMS solution.

If you want to optimise cost and service across multiple carriers, we make it easy. From consigning and tracking through to invoices, reconciliation, insights, and continuous improvement.

I’m a director of the business and, day to day, I’m increasingly the AI lead, looking at how AI is introduced into our product and across the organisation.

Q2: How has the emergence of AI influenced your strategy?

Matt: You can’t open a paper or turn on the radio without hearing about it. If you do a SWOT analysis, AI could easily show up as either a strength or a threat, and clearly, we want it to be a strength.

This feels like a once-in-a-generation disruption, and everyone is in a vulnerable position. You either lead, or you get led.

We’re a tech business and we want to have a market-leading product, so for us this was a no-brainer.

We started more than 18 months ago by hiring some bright graduates from Melbourne University to begin building capability. Through that experience, and seeing the speed of AI’s impact and maturity, we realised it was time to take the next step.

Q3: Why did you feel like an AI Envisioning Workshop was needed?

Matt: Introducing some structure was a big influence for us. We had plenty of ideas, but no clear framework for how to execute.

AI can feel huge, abstract, and a little overwhelming, and we needed help bringing those ideas back to reality.

The workshop broke the approach into practical steps, helped us prioritise, and identify our first projects and early wins.

And when you factor in that everyone already has a busy day job, having some additional focus and fresh eyes on building capability was really valuable.

Q4: What did the workshop involve, and what did you unpack during the session?

Matt: We started by level-setting on what AI is and what it isn’t and then shifted the focus to our business challenges and opportunities.

We used four drivers to evaluate ideas: growth, cost reduction, better customer experience, and risk reduction.

We walked into the session with a handful of ideas and walked out with many more. From there, we prioritised based on highest benefit and lowest complexity.

We left the session much clearer and more focused. We felt confident about where to focus, the practical delivery considerations we needed to solve for, and having a framework to move from idea to MVP and into production.

That exercise had huge value. Without it, there’s a good chance we’d still be spinning our wheels.

Q5: Did the workshop surface anything unexpected?

Matt: Starting with really understanding what AI is, and where and how it can be used, was enlightening. We realised there are lots of things that can be solved with existing technology. AI doesn’t need to be pointed everywhere.

Our biggest early wins have come from boring, repetitive tasks, not the lofty moonshots.

It’s a popular phrase, and one we probably fell into a little ourselves, but if you walk in with an AI hammer, everything starts to look like an AI nail.

Q6: Now you're a few months down the track from the workshop, what are you seeing and learning?

Matt: One of the big things we’ve learnt is that the accuracy of input data really matters, especially if you’re using an AI agent or interface in a more creative way. In many cases, business intelligence should do the heavy lifting to generate accurate data, and then AI can explain it, broadcast it, and amplify it. The lesson for us has been to use AI in the right places, not everywhere.

We’re also seeing growing confidence and capability across our leaders and teams. People know this isn’t just a phase, not because we’re telling them, but because they can see it themselves. They can see the performance baseline shifting.

Another thing we’ve become more comfortable with is failing forward. Once you start and commit, you realise that iterating, learning, and rethinking is just part of the AI journey.

At our user group, we shared what AI initiatives and features have progressed well, what hasn’t, and what we’re learning along the way. People want to hear the real story of falling off the skateboard and getting back up again, not just the polished wins.

We believe that level of honesty shows we’re genuinely progressive, and when we introduce AI-influenced product improvements, customers understand where they’ve come from.

What is an AI Envisioning Workshop?

Many organisations see the potential of artificial intelligence but struggle to translate ideas into practical action. Fusion5’s AI Envisioning Workshop is a focused one-day AI workshop designed to uncover high-value AI business use cases and identify where AI can create real impact. The session begins by creating a shared understanding of what AI is, what it isn’t, and where it can genuinely help the business. From there, business and technology leaders explore opportunities, assess feasibility, and prioritise initiatives aligned with strategic goals. Rather than producing lengthy strategy documents, the workshop helps organisations build clarity, confidence, and momentum to move forward with AI transformation.

Following the AI workshop, organisations can move quickly from idea to execution through a Minimum Lovable Product (MLP). Fusion5 works alongside teams to deploy a practical AI solution in their own environment within weeks, helping demonstrate value and build trust in enterprise AI. By proving impact early and prioritising the right AI business use cases, organisations create the momentum needed to scale AI initiatives and accelerate their broader AI transformation.