Every office can feel the generative AI revolution is upon us and around us everywhere. Every board and management team is asking what more they can be doing with GenAI. How can your organisation keep up and be more effective using this transformative technology?
Products like Microsoft 365 Copilot and ChatGPT Plus are leading the charge. But as businesses across New Zealand look to scale GenAI use across their workforce, they're hitting some real roadblocks. Here’s why we built Theta Assist and how it’s changing the way organisations leverage AI.
The Problem: GenAI Isn’t Accessible or Ready for Work
1. The True Cost Barrier
Cutting-edge GenAI doesn’t come cheap. Per-seat pricing for platforms like Copilot and ChatGPT Plus and Teams quickly adds up when you want to enable broad, organisational use. For many, the numbers just can’t be justified, especially when the value for every user is still unclear.
Scenario: You want to roll out AI across 300 staff. At $50 per user/month, that’s $180,000 per year—before you’ve proven ROI.
2. Data Governance: A Slow Lane for AI Adoption
AI that acts on your business information (think: Copilot for Microsoft 365) demands serious data preparation. Any messy, permission-sprawling, or out-of-date document libraries can quickly derail the project. Auditing, cleaning, and governing the knowledge base for Copilot is a huge project, with major compliance risks if done incorrectly.
The result? AI initiatives stall, or are postponed, as IT works to wrangle SharePoint sprawl and data classification. Meanwhile, business teams are left waiting.
3. Uncertain ROI for All Users
Not every employee gets the same benefit from GenAI tools. Some users utilise AI innovations daily, whilst others don’t. With per-user licenses, it’s hard to make the case for broad licensing when adoption and true productivity gains vary widely. This leads to “pilot purgatory”—endless evaluation phases without meaningful, scalable deployment.
4. Missing Enterprise Features and Security
Standard GenAI chatbots are not work-ready out of the box:
- ChatGPT lacks deep integration with corporate file storage (e.g. SharePoint), role-based security, and tools tailored for real team scenarios.
- Copilot is deeply integrated, but only within the Microsoft ecosystem, and requires that daunting data prep for maximum impact. Copilot often lags the latest capabilities in ChatGPT.
In many organisations staff are using tools like ChatGPT – with little control of what data is being put into the tools and if privacy settings are turned on. Businesses are worried about shadow AI risks and looking for solutions – or they are turning a blind eye to the problem.
The Solution: Theta Assist
At Theta, we saw these roadblocks affecting ourselves and our customers and decided to act. We built Theta Assist to bring secure, scalable, and cost-effective GenAI to the enterprise, without the headaches.
How Theta Assist is Different
1. Predictable, Affordable Pricing
Our pricing model is built for teams. With volume and usage plans, you can roll out AI assistants widely without financial overcommitment or licensing waste. The ROI calculations become easy when the investment is much lower.
2. Work-Ready Features
We designed features specifically for business:
- Teams App – use Theta Assist in Teams on desktop and mobile
- Use Microsoft single sign on.
- Sync assistants with SharePoint libraries for instant, secure knowledge access—no complicated migrations or data prepping.
- Share assistants with teams or the whole organisation to foster rapid use-case sharing and boost productivity everywhere.
- Export content directly to Microsoft Word or PowerPoint templates for seamless reporting and presentations.
- Upload and work with text documents and images for richer inputs and more versatile outputs.
- Sync content from your website into an assistant knowledge base
3. Enterprise-Grade Security and Data Governance
Theta Assist is built with New Zealand businesses and privacy regulations in mind. Keep your data private and confidential. You host Theta Assist in your Azure environment and use OpenAI models hosted by OpenAI or hosted in Azure.
4. Based on World-Leading Models – with More Control
We use the same cutting-edge OpenAI models powering Copilot and ChatGPT, but layer on enterprise controls, team collaboration, and custom integrations. You get the best of both worlds: world-class AI, but adapted for your real work.
5. Memory and Sharing
With an opt-in memory option, conversations and learnings can be recalled by the assistant (with appropriate controls). Share successful use cases, prompts, or assistants across your business for rapid scaling of AI-driven productivity improvements.
6. Training and Partnering
A product by itself if not enough to equip your team for success. While many people are curious and will figure things out quickly, others will be afraid/reluctant and too busy to try their hand at something new. Not only do you need a product, you need a partner that can help you on your AI journey. Thanks to Theta’s training capability and investment in the latest AI tech we can bring your team on this journey too.
The Bottomline
Theta Assist removes the blockers to responsible, high-impact GenAI use across your organisation:
- No more exorbitant per-seat costs.
- No months-long data governance projects just to get started.
- Work-ready tools, today—not vapourware or future promises.
- Confidence your data kept secure and not used for training models
- A partner, not just another AI product