Predictions for 2026: Get Your Competitive Advantage

It’s that time of year again, the moment where I sit down, look at the calendar, wonder how on earth another twelve months disappeared, notice I’ve picked up a few more grey hairs, and deliver my annual “Brendan’s Business Predictions.”

You’ve all been politely (and maybe not so politely) waiting for my prediction for 2026, so let’s not drag it out.

I’ll get straight to the point. My prediction for 2026 is one word.

AI.

And before you roll your eyes and say, “Right, Brendan, thanks for the groundbreaking insight…”, hear me out. Because I’m not talking about AI in the context of billion-dollar enterprises or Silicon Valley fantasies. I’m talking about AI on the shop floor, in the back office, in the finance team, in your customer service inbox, in the day-to-day grind of real businesses doing between $4–$80 million in revenue.

Your world. My world. The mid-market.

And my prediction is simple:

If you do not have people in your business dedicating meaningful, consistent time to learning and applying AI tools in 2026 (not full-time roles, but real time) your business will fall behind.

Not in a big explosion. Not suddenly.

Silently. Gradually. Like the frog in the pot who doesn’t realise the heat is rising until it’s too late.

And that’s exactly what I want you to avoid.

→ Why AI Matters More for Mid-Market Businesses Than Anyone Else
→ AI Won’t Take Your Job, But Someone Using AI Might
→ You Don’t Need AI Specialists, You Need Business People Who Know Your Business
→ What This Means for the Mid-Market in 2026
→ What Winners Will Look Like in 2026
→ The Pain Point No One Wants to Admit
→ So What Should You Actually DO in 2026?
→ How CFO Dynamics Will Support Businesses Through the AI Shift in 2026
→ The Final Message for 2026

Why AI Matters More for Mid-Market Businesses Than Anyone Else

Let’s be honest with one another: most mid-size businesses aren’t exactly known for innovation at lightning speed.

You’re busy. You’re operationally heavy. You’re dealing with people issues, supply chain headaches, labour shortages, cashflow fluctuations, customer demands, compliance work, leadership development, machine downtime, and the dozen other fires that somehow all ignite at 3pm on a Wednesday.

Most days you’re just trying to hold the ship together.

So when people talk about AI, it feels like a luxury. A “nice-to-have.” Something the big corporates can play with while you get back to reality.

But 2026 is the year where AI stops being optional for mid-market businesses.

Here’s why:

1. The speed of change will outpace your ability to respond manually.

Everything is going to accelerate. Customer expectations, content generation, reporting cycles, sales follow-ups, quoting, job costing, reconciliation, quality control, workflow management. AI tools are already rapid today. In 12 months, they’ll be unrecognisable.

2. Your competitors WILL quietly use it even if you don’t.

Not loudly. Not in some strategic “AI transformation” project but in pockets: admin tasks, quoting prompts, reporting, labour utilisation, scheduling, CRM notes, onboarding workflows, email templates, policy drafting, quality reviews.

Incremental improvements add up. Slowly at first. Then suddenly all at once.

3. The talent shortage isn’t going anywhere. AI is the only genuine multiplier.

You can’t hire your way out of labour constraints. You can’t hire your way out of productivity gaps.  AI isn’t about replacing people.

It’s about giving your existing people 20–40% more time back so they can do higher-value work.

4. AI is not replacing machines, it’s replacing inefficiency around machines.

If you're in manufacturing, construction, wholesale or service, your machinery, equipment, tools and trucks aren’t getting swapped for AI robots tomorrow.

But everything around them (quoting, scheduling, communication, reporting, forecasting, maintenance planning, stock tracking, financial analysis) absolutely is.

AI Won’t Take Your Job, But Someone Using AI Might

Here’s the truth: you don’t need AI doing 100% of a task.

You just need it doing 50–70% of the grunt work so your people can apply their actual brains to the remaining 30–50%:

• A bad first draft of a document
•  A half-built report
• A baseline forecast
• A templated response
• A reconciled data set
• A cleaned spreadsheet
• A summarised meeting
• A pre-written email sequence
• A analysed variance
• A group of anomalies flagged
• A sales pipeline segmented

This is where the value is.

The gap between 0% and 50% is enormous. The gap between 50% and 100%? Much smaller.

This is what unlocks efficiency without replacing your team.

You Don’t Need AI Specialists, You Need Business People Who Know Your Business

One of the biggest traps I see businesses fall into is chasing unicorn hires.

“Let’s get an AI engineer.”
“Let’s hire a data scientist.”
“Let’s get a machine learning expert.”

No. Not yet.

You don’t need AI experts.

You need your BEST people learning how to use AI.

People who already understand:

• how your operations work
• what your customers expect
• where the bottlenecks are
• what your margin levers are
• what your team constantly gets stuck on
• what repetitive tasks eat up hours
• where the financial blind spots really sit

AI needs context and context lives inside people who know your business.

At CFO Dynamics, we’ve taken this seriously. We didn’t hire external AI specialists.

We invested in our existing team. People who know finance, operations, client engagement, reporting frameworks, working capital, breakeven, labour recovery, and manufacturing realities inside out.

AI becomes powerful when it’s used by great people, not replaced by them.

What This Means for the Mid-Market in 2026

Here’s the uncomfortable part that will sting a little.

Most mid-market businesses will do absolutely nothing with AI in 2026.

They'll talk about it. They’ll get excited about a new tool.

Someone will run a trial.

Someone else will say they “don’t have time to learn another system.”.

Then the business goes back to business-as-usual.

These businesses will fall behind.

Not because they’re bad businesses but because the world will quietly move past them.

Then there will be the other group, the ones who win.

What Winners Will Look Like in 2026

• Their admin teams will handle twice the volume with the same headcount.
• Their finance teams will report faster with cleaner data.
• Their sales teams will respond quicker and close more deals.
• Their senior leaders will make decisions with clearer information.
• Their margins will improve because waste is reduced.
• Their processes will evolve without needing massive restructures.
• Their teams will feel more supported because low-value grunt work is removed.
• Their onboarding and training will run smoother.
• Their customer interactions will feel more personalised.
• Their ability to forecast and plan will be significantly enhanced.

The winners will look like they have more staff.

More time.

More clarity.

More leadership capability.

The only difference is that they embraced AI early, deliberately and practically, without overthinking it.

The Pain Point No One Wants to Admit

Here’s the reality:

Most businesses don’t have anyone with time set aside to improve the business.

Everyone is stuck in operations.

Everyone is in the weeds.

Everyone is fighting fires.

The people who could implement AI don’t have time because the tasks AI would help with are consuming them.

It’s a loop.

2026 is the year you must break it.

AI isn’t “extra work.”
It’s the work that reduces all future work.

So What Should You Actually DO in 2026?

Here’s the simple, practical path with no tech jargon and no 100-page AI strategy document.

1. Choose 2–3 people in your business to become AI-capable.

Not full-time roles but committed roles.

These people should understand your business deeply.

2. Give them structured time every week.

Not “when they get a spare minute" an actual scheduled, uninterrupted time.

3. Start with low-value, high-volume tasks.

Where does the team spend too much time? Where is human error too common? Where are delays frequent? Where do staff constantly ask questions?

That’s your starting point.

4. Don’t aim for 100% automation.

Aim for 30–70% that’s where the real productivity gain is.

5. Document what’s working as you go.

Because your SOPs, policies, and workflows will change dramatically this year.

6. Build internal confidence before chasing advanced tools.

AI is like fitness, you start with walking, not Olympic lifting.

How CFO Dynamics Will Support Businesses Through the AI Shift in 2026

I want to be crystal clear: we are not an AI company. We’re not pretending to be one. We’re not building robots in the back office.

And we’re not rolling out AI transformation projects like a consulting giant.

But we are doing what we’ve always done best:

Helping mid-market businesses improve their financial performance, decision-making capability, leadership confidence and operational clarity. AI is becoming a new tool in that toolbox.

So rather than selling hype, here’s how CFO Dynamics is genuinely positioned to support you through 2026:

1. We’re integrating AI into our own workflows first, so we can teach you what’s real, not theoretical.

We’re experimenting, testing, breaking things, improving things and learning internally.

We’re doing this before we advise you to touch anything.

Why?
Because we refuse to recommend something we don’t fully understand or haven’t used ourselves.

In 2026, we’ll be sharing what works, what doesn’t, and what’s actually worth your time.

2. We’re focusing on freeing up our own time so we can deliver more strategic value to you.

Our goal is simple:

Use AI to reduce low-value tasks inside CFOD so that we have MORE bandwidth for high-value CFO work with clients.

That means:

• deeper analysis
• more meaningful conversations
• more proactive financial insights
• faster response times
• better forward planning
• clearer guidance for your leadership team

We’re not replacing our team, we’re giving them more time to help YOU.

3. We’re building our internal knowledge so we can guide your internal people.

We’ve made a conscious decision not to hire “AI people.” Instead, we are upskilling our existing team, who already understand:

• manufacturing
• construction
• wholesale & distribution
• service businesses
• working capital
• breakeven
• labour recovery
• operational bottlenecks
• margin pressures
• reporting frameworks

Because AI without business context is useless.

As we build confidence in how AI applies practically, we’ll be helping your team do the same in the simplest, most no-nonsense way possible.

4. We’ll help you identify opportunities to reduce inefficiency not replace staff.

Our role isn’t to automate you out of a job. Our role is to help you understand:

• where your team is bogged down
• where bottlenecks exist
• which processes can be sped up
• which tasks don’t need human input
• where your financial blind spots are
• where money is being left on the table

We’ll help highlight areas where AI could assist, but you decide whether it’s worth pursuing.

We’re not pushing tools.
We’re enabling clarity.

5. We’ll be your filter separating noise from what truly matters.

AI is going to produce a tsunami of tools, apps, platforms and shiny objects in 2026. Most will be:

• ineffective
• poorly integrated
• a distraction
• a waste of time
• impossible to implement
• misaligned with mid-market realities

Our job is not to get swept up in the excitement. Our job is to:

• stay calm
• stay practical
• understand what will actually help
• and advise you based on real business impact

Not hype.

6. We’ll walk alongside you, not ahead of you.

We’re not positioning ourselves as AI experts.

We’re positioning ourselves as:

• CFO partners
• operational advisors
• strategic thinkers
• financial mentors
• business problem-solvers

Who just happen to be leveraging new tools that help us do our job better.

The Final Message for 2026

If you take nothing else from this:

Do not be the frog.

The heat is rising.

Slowly.

Quietly.

Undeniably.

AI isn’t coming.  It’s here and the businesses that act now (even in small, simple, practical ways) will have a major advantage by this time next year.

And yes, I’ll probably have more grey hair when I sit down to write the 2027 prediction but if you follow this advice, you’ll be sitting in a stronger business, with better margins, clearer reporting, more capable people, smoother operations, and less day-to-day chaos.

I’ll take that as a win for both of us.

Enjoy your Christmas, your New Year, and the quiet stretch of January. We’ll be back in late Jan, ready for a massive 2026, where AI isn’t a buzzword, but a competitive advantage.

See you then.

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