Financial ServicesExecutiveCompany-Wide AI Adoption
How Spendesk achieved 90% AI adoption in 6 months with Dust
Key highlights:
- 90% company-wide adoption achieved within 6 months of deployment
- Reached 92% weekly users retention
- 1 in 4 users are agent builders
- Replaced multiple point solutions with a single AI platform
- Built a scalable AI Champions program across all departments
About Spendesk
Spendesk is Europe's leading AI-powered spend management and procurement platform that transforms company spending. Trusted by thousands of businesses across Europe, Spendesk combines payment cards, expense management, invoice processing, corporate travel booking, procurement, and accounting automation in a single platform, empowering employees while giving finance teams real-time oversight. With offices in Paris, London, Berlin, and Barcelona, Spendesk is pioneering the shift from backward-looking spend management to forward-looking Spend Planning & Analysis (SP&A).
Challenge: finding a secure AI solution that works company-wide
By early 2024, Spendesk faced a growing challenge. Employees had recognized AI's potential to boost productivity and were actively seeking ways to incorporate these tools into their work. However, as Spendesk also owns its own Payment Institution (Spendesk Financial Services), Spendesk couldn't allow unrestricted use of external AI tools.
"Like all companies that prioritize security and compliance, we couldn't have people using tools that hadn't been approved by security," explains Axel Demazy, CEO of Spendesk. "There was a clear need, but we were held back by compliance requirements. We needed a partner that could unlock that need and in the right way."
The company initially explored AI solutions for specific use cases—particularly customer support and sales acceleration. But early research revealed a critical limitation with point solutions: the team would be locking itself into a single vendor for each individual use case. It made more sense to have a solution that could benefit everyone across the company.
Solution: a progressive rollout anchored in hands-on experimentation
Why Dust
After evaluating multiple options, Dust emerged as a clear choice for three key reasons:
1. Security as an enabler, not a blocker
Dust guarantees no training on customer data, offers European hosting options, and ensures GDPR compliance.
2. Company-wide solution
Unlike siloed point solutions tied to specific vendors, Dust could benefit all teams, ranging from support and sales to marketing and operations. Compared to having multiple point solutions, Dust could also offer competitive pricing to Spendesk.
3. Build vs. buy philosophy
Finally, Dust began to serve Spendesk as a sandbox to build capabilities that would otherwise require multiple specialized tools or internal development.
“When you have a tool like Dust that can serve as a sandbox to build what you might otherwise buy, and it can benefit the entire company while meeting security requirements, the decision becomes obvious." Axel Demazy, CEO of Spendesk
From POC to company-wide deployment: key success factors
Securing leadership buy-in for wide scale adoption
To begin with, Spendesk launched a three-month POC focusing on customer support. Greyg Sinigaglia de Malibran, who led the AI implementation at Spendesk, said that when presenting to the leadership team, he focused on qualitative feedback rather than hard metrics. "At that time I didn't have metrics to share in terms of 'we saved 1,000 or 1,500 hours,' but when people told me, 'Greyg, tomorrow I can't imagine working without Dust,' that was strong measurable feedback. "
By January 2025, after seeing strong results, leadership decided to move forward with full deployment. The scope quickly expanded beyond support to include RFP response tools and company-wide knowledge agents. Driving adoption through enablement
Spendesk's approach centered on getting AI tools into employees' hands and letting them discover value firsthand, rather than mandating use from the top down. To do this, the company launched two initiatives:
Hackathons
Spendesk launched a series of hackathons to accelerate learning and experimentation where teams competed to create the best Dust agents for their workflows, generating enthusiasm and practical use cases.
AI Champions program
The company also launched an AI Champions program, which placed one or two champions in each department: individuals responsible for understanding their team's needs and implementing AI into workflows.
"The Champions program was key to reaching adoption, we're empowering champions to solve real problems in their departments. When colleagues see the results, adoption happens naturally." Greyg Sinigaglia de Malibran
Results: Rapid adoption, new capability and cultural transformation
90% adoption without top-down mandates
Within months of full deployment, Spendesk achieved 90% adoption across the company—a remarkable rate for any new technology platform, and around 50% of messages sent to custom Dust agents.
These agents are built by Spendeskers for Spendeskers to ease existing operations, 1 in 4 users are agent builders. showing a strong custom platform usage beyond generic LLMs.
"People already had the desire to have these types of tools, plus the technical appetite to go query agents," Greyg explained. "So it happened quite naturally."
Cost efficiency and replaced point solutions
One immediate impact was the elimination of redundant AI subscriptions and specialized vertical solutions, including their go-to-market AI tool.
"From my perspective, it costs more not to adopt AI than to adopt it," notes Greyg.
Accelerated onboarding
Dust quickly became embedded in Spendesk's fundamental operations. New employee onboarding now relies heavily on Dust AI agents, allowing new hires to quickly access institutional knowledge and get answers to common questions.
Employee satisfaction
The cultural transformation is evident in employee feedback. When team members say they can't imagine working at a company without Dust, it signals that the technology has become integral to how they work—not just a nice-to-have feature.
Key takeaways for other companies
From Axel’s experience shifting Spendesk towards wide-spread AI use:
Start broad early: "If we did it again, we would have expanded on the number of team members able to use Dust from the get go. Don't limit it to one person or one team during POC."
Enable, don't mandate: "Everyone at Spendesk already had the appetite for these tools. We just needed to provide the secure, approved way to use them."
Invest in champions: "10% dedicated time for champions, included in their objectives, ensures they can actually drive adoption in their departments."
Measure what matters: the monthly active user KPI only surfaces the topic of adoption. What is even more important is the percentage of builders and the percentage of messages sent to custom agents
Focus on natural adoption: "AI adoption will happen naturally once people see their colleagues using it effectively. Build great use cases rather than convincing skeptics."
Treat security as an enabler: "For regulated businesses, the question isn't whether to adopt AI, it's how to do it securely. Finding a partner that meets compliance requirements while enabling company-wide innovation is the unlock. Security doesn't have to slow you down, it can guide you toward better solutions."
