Here are five things in tech that happened this week and how they affect your business.

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This Week in Business Tech News

Business Technology News #1 – Intuit introduces QuickBooks Bill Pay.

Intuit has launched QuickBooks Bill Pay – a fully integrated solution aimed at streamlining business-to-business payments and automating accounts payable (AP) for small and mid-sized businesses. Some of its capabilities include automated bill creation. Businesses can forward their vendor invoices to QuickBooks, which auto-generates bills for review and approval. Flexible payment options allow vendors to be paid via ACH transfers or paper checks. Digital records store bills and payments in one place improving financial visibility. Transactions are automatically recorded and matched in your books, reducing manual entry up to 48 percent. QuickBooks Bill Pay has three pricing tiers – Basic (free), Premium, and Elite – each offering different levels of ACH payments, automation, and team controls. (Source: The Paypers)

Why this is important for your business:

This was inevitable. For years QuickBooks has been integrating with other similar services like BILL, which are all great. But now Intuit has decided to offer their own. On the plus side it should ultimately be seamless and easier to integrate. But on the other side products like BILL will offer more features and likely better support as this is the flagship offering. Regardless, all businesses using QuickBooks should be investigating and implementing automatic bill paying services to save time and increase productivity. New AI-based features will make these products even more powerful soon.

Business Technology News #2 – Google’s AI can now make phone calls for you.

Google has just rolled out a major upgrade to its Search experience – AI-powered phone calls. The AI calling agent can call local businesses on your behalf based on the query entered in Search. Example – if you search for “pet groomers near me,” you’ll see an option to “have AI check for availability.” Google’s assistant will make the calls and summarize the results. It will then ask follow-up questions like when you need the service and how you want to receive updates. \ (Source: The Verge)

Why this is important for your business:

I do believe that automated phone calls will continue to grow in popularity. Our job as business owners is to be prepared to receive these calls. Will training be required? Will Google offer some way to automatically accept these calls without humans in our companies being involved?

Business Technology News #3 – Microsoft promises to crack one of the biggest problems with Windows 11: slow performance.

Microsoft is tackling one of Windows 11’s biggest complaints: sluggish performance, especially on older PCs. In preview builds, Microsoft collects performance logs when testers experience slowdowns. These logs are stored locally and only sent to Microsoft if users submit feedback via the Facebook hub – “System Sluggishness.” By expanding the scope of performance data, Microsoft hopes to pinpoint and fix speed-related issues more effectively. Common pain points include laggy File Explorer and slow search functionality. Microsoft is prioritizing these in its performance initiative. This effort is part of a broader push to make Windows 11 faster and more responsive, especially for users who’ve found it less snappy than Windows 10. (Source: TechRadar)

Why this is important for your business:

Frankly, I have not heard reports about slow Windows 11 performance from clients using the operating system but if Microsoft is doing this it’s clearly a problem somewhere. To be sure make sure all of your devices are regularly updated the most recent version of the operating system and don’t ignore notifications that new updates are available.

Business Technology News #4 – Insurers making the turn to agentic AI – report.

Insurers are cautiously embracing agentic AI – a form of artificial intelligence that can autonomously manage complex tasks and workflows. According to a new report from the Capgemini Research Institute, 20 percent of insurance firms are piloting agentic AI, and 12 percent have implemented it at scale. However, only 4 percent fully trust these systems as confidence in fully autonomous AI agents dropped from 43 percent to 27 percent over the past year due to concerns about accountability, explainability and ethical use. Insurers are integrating AI agents into workflows to assist brokers, underwriters, and service teams, embracing human-AI collaboration. Capgemini estimates agentic AI could generate up to $450 billion in value by 2028, but reaching that potential will require strategic investments, governance, risk frameworks and organizational design. (Source: Insurance Business)

Why this is important for your business:

This industry is ripe for agentic AI. The process of evaluating, approving and then writing up an insurance policy can be repetitive and doesn’t have to require as much human effort as what’s currently being spent. I’m sure that no insurance company is relying on agentic AI to do this right now but I can understand why they’re investing in and testing these options heavily. As with so many other things around AI these are things that will be common in the not so distant future.

Business Technology News #5 – Slack gets smarter: New AI tools summarize chats, explain jargon, and automate work.

Slack is stepping up its AI game with a suite of new features designed to make workplace communication smoother, smarter, and more productive. An AI assistant embedded in Slack Canvas can generate project briefs, extract action items, and reformat meeting notes – all from your conversations. Enterprise Search lets connected users search across connected apps like Salesforce, Google Drive, and Microsoft Teams from one interface, turning scattered data into actionable insights. Hover over acronyms or jargon and Slack will instantly explain them using your organization’s unique vocabulary and history. Slack can also identify and highlight follow-ups and deadlines from messages where you’re mentioned. Slack Huddles now include automatic transcript and summaries. (Source: VentureBeat)

Why this is important for your business:

According to VentureBeat Salesforce – Slack’s parent company – is also restricting external AI access to Slack data, betting its native tools will outperform third-party alternatives. If you’re relying on Slack for your communications and workflows it’s important that you understand and start testing these new features internally. I strongly recommend getting training from a Slack consultant.

Each week I round up five business technology news stories and explain why they’re important for your business. If you have any interesting stories, please post to my X account @genemarks