Fonterra uses AI agents to check investment and governance papers
In plain words
The dairy giant has agents in production that help assess investments, governance and accounting.
What happened: Agents live for investment, governance and accounting reviews.
Source: istart.com.au ↗
How to do it yourself
Our suggested steps. The company didn't publish theirs.
- 1
Write your criteria for approving spend: budget, payback period, risk, who signs off.
- 2
Create a custom GPT with the prompt below and your criteria.
- 3
Run the next 3 purchase requests through it before your usual review.
- 4
Use its questions list to send back incomplete requests.
- 5
Keep its scorecards in a shared folder as your decision log.
The instructions to give the AI
Paste this into ChatGPT (the free plan is fine), swap the [brackets] for your details, and test it on a few real examples.
This is one part of the setup. It won't connect to your phone, inbox or other apps on its own; the steps above cover that.
Agent instructions (prompt)
You assess spending/investment proposals for [business] against these criteria: [paste] For the proposal below: 1) summarise it in 3 lines, 2) score each criterion 1-5 with evidence, 3) estimate payback, 4) list missing information as questions, 5) recommend approve / revise / decline with reasons. Proposal: [paste]
[Highlighted] = replace with your own details before you run it.
What you should get back: "Proposal B scores 7/10: strong payback (14 months), weak on risk. Questions to ask: who maintains it?"
Written by Quickly and Good, inspired by this case.
More detail: tools, prices and what you'll need
The company used: Microsoft Copilot Studio
You could use: Copilot Studio or a ChatGPT custom GPT with your investment/purchase criteria
- Microsoft Copilot
AI assistant and agent builder inside Microsoft 365 and Teams.
See pricing · Official site ↗
- ChatGPT
General AI assistant: writes, summarises and answers from files you give it.
Free plan; paid plans available · Official site ↗
Prices from each tool's own pricing page, checked Oct 2026.
What you'll need
- ☐An enterprise AI platform licence
- ☐Integration with your core systems (CRM, billing, identity)
- ☐Security, privacy and compliance review
- ☐A curated knowledge base
- ☐A testing and evaluation programme
- ☐Human escalation and monitoring
Can I do this myself?
Not on your own. These are enterprise platforms sold with implementation help. A small business can get part of the way with Intercom Fin or Tidio Lyro (3-7 days, no-code), but matching this result means hiring a builder.
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