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
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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%:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Here’s the simple, practical path with no tech jargon and no 100-page AI strategy document.
Not full-time roles but committed roles.
These people should understand your business deeply.
Not “when they get a spare minute" an actual scheduled, uninterrupted time.
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.
Aim for 30–70% that’s where the real productivity gain is.
Because your SOPs, policies, and workflows will change dramatically this year.
AI is like fitness, you start with walking, not Olympic lifting.
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:
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.
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:
We’re not replacing our team, we’re giving them more time to help YOU.
We’ve made a conscious decision not to hire “AI people.” Instead, we are upskilling our existing team, who already understand:
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.
Our role isn’t to automate you out of a job. Our role is to help you understand:
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.
AI is going to produce a tsunami of tools, apps, platforms and shiny objects in 2026. Most will be:
Our job is not to get swept up in the excitement. Our job is to:
Not hype.
We’re not positioning ourselves as AI experts.
We’re positioning ourselves as:
Who just happen to be leveraging new tools that help us do our job better.
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.
For more tips on increasing revenue and profitability, sign up to our newsletter for business owners, leaders, and finance team managers. Each week, you'll get practical, no-fluff tips and insights in short, easy videos. No corporate jargon, no time wasting. Sign up now.