Post Dispatch has article today on local business adopting AI. (Post-Dispatch July 5, 2026 p C5)
Link was difficult but managed to save it to Facebook:
Rather than hire consultants, company–a local contractor-- selected a group of employees. Company “gave them the basics of Claude, our LLM of choice, and we ran a two-week hackathon with simple instructions:
Build a tool, a dashboard, automate a process, use it for research. Then come back and show us what you have done.”
Results were–”A sales dashboard turned a cumbersome spreadsheet into something visual and digestible.
finance team member used it to evaluate our WIP (work-in-progress) schedule and identify where to push for more information.
A project manager automated an administrative process that took two hours down to minutes
A risk manager used it to evaluate contract terms.”
They were pleased with the results.
This is only their first step into AI but results are building confidence as they begin to consider more opportunities.