82% of Education Leaders Are Already Engaging with AI. So What Comes Next?
Artificial intelligence is moving quickly from experimentation to expectation across education. Yet the most important question is not how much AI an institution can deploy. It is where AI can release scarce capacity, strengthen decision-making, and help people reduce admin across finance, HR, and operations.
That distinction matters. Universities and colleges are managing financial pressure, changing funding models, evolving workforce expectations, new delivery approaches, and growing accountability requirements. Against this backdrop, 82% of respondents to our recent webinar poll said they are already engaging with AI. 29% use it regularly, 29% are exploring it, and 24% use it occasionally. Yet no respondents said AI was fully embedded in their processes. This suggests the next challenge is not adoption alone. It is moving from experimentation towards repeatable, governed uses of AI that create measurable institutional value.
Start with capacity, not technology
The most useful starting point is not the technology itself, but the institutional capacity it can release. Experienced finance, HR, planning, research support, and operations professionals can lose hours to searching for information, reconciling data, chasing approvals, and answering the same process questions. It is therefore telling that 33% of webinar respondents saw reducing administrative workload as AI’s greatest opportunity, followed by increasing workforce productivity at 25%. Improving data-driven decision-making and achieving greater operational efficiency each attracted 21%, showing that institutions see value across both day-to-day work and longer-term performance.
These priorities are closely connected. Less administration creates more productive capacity. Better access to trusted information improves operational efficiency, while earlier insight supports better decisions. AI creates the most value when it strengthens this chain of outcomes without weakening professional judgment or accountability.
What practical AI looks like in education
For finance teams, AI can suggest coding for supplier invoices, surface exceptions for review, and reduce repetitive reconciliation. For managers, it can bring approvals and guidance into the tools they already use. For HR teams, it can handle routine requests while preserving a clear path to experienced people for sensitive or complex cases. For planning and research teams, it can make relevant financial, workforce, grant, and project information easier to find and interpret.
This is the direction behind Unit4’s approach to AI: practical assistance embedded into everyday work rather than AI for its own sake. The important question should always be: What effort are we removing, what decision are we improving, and what capacity are we giving back? Ava can support approvals and real-time help through Microsoft Teams, while account prediction can learn from an institution’s own historical invoice data and suggest coding with a visible confidence score. Expense recognition can capture receipt details, and performance insights can help summarize reviews or generate draft objectives. The aim is not AI for its own sake, but practical assistance that fits the flow of work.
That means AI should operate within established permissions, policies, and controls, with traceable information and people remaining responsible for judgments, approvals, and sensitive decisions. A strong digital foundation, trusted data, well-designed processes, and clear governance, is what allows AI to create meaningful value.
From systems of record to systems that support action
Looking ahead, the opportunity is to move from systems that simply record activity to systems that can reason over institutional context and then support action. Imagine asking about overdue research projects, seeing the related unbilled work, understanding where the data came from, and receiving governed recommendations for what to do next. That is a more proactive, ambient experience, but one that must remain bounded by the institution’s own access rules and choices. The institutions that derive the greatest value from AI will not necessarily be those that deploy the most AI. They will be those that apply it deliberately to the places where it can release scarce capacity, improve decisions and give people more time to focus on what education exists to deliver: learning, research and better outcomes.
Watch the webinar and sign up for the AI for Your World campaign
To explore these ideas in more detail and hear the full discussion, watch the on-demand recording. You’ll discover practical examples, product insights, and guidance on how AI can help education institutions reduce administrative workload, improve decision-making, and create more time for teaching, research, and student support. Existing Unit4 ERP customers can also sign up for our AI for Your World campaign to explore selected AI capabilities commitment-free until Aug. 31, 2027, when signing up before Dec. 31, 2026.