PhoenixDX sat down with Luís Faceira, Board Member and Head of AI at Winning Consulting, to explore what’s really happening in enterprise AI right now. An AI specialist, Faceira is the keynote speaker at next week’s executive breakfasts for IT Leaders in Sydney and Melbourne, hosted by Winning.
Q: Luís, can you tell us a bit about your background and how you got into AI?
Luís Faceira: I’ve always been a technologist at heart. I started programming when I was about 10 and even ran a small online business as a teenager. I studied software engineering in Portugal and moved into consulting, working at the intersection of business and technology.
Eventually, I founded my own company focused on web development and modern software engineering practices. That business later merged with Winning Consulting, where I now lead the AI practice. Over the past few years, my focus has been on helping companies apply AI as a catalyst for redesign, rather than simply treating it as a drop-in replacement.
Q: What are you seeing in the market right now when it comes to AI adoption?
Luís Faceira: The pace of change is extraordinary. What worked six months ago can already feel outdated. The industry is maturing quickly, though we’re starting to understand where AI delivers real value and where it doesn’t.
One major shift is in software engineering. The quality and cost-efficiency of new models are so high that many organisations are rethinking hiring, especially at the junior level. But that creates a long-term challenge: we still need experienced engineers to guide and validate AI outputs.
Ultimately, the most important skill isn’t technical; it’s judgment. Knowing what you want and recognising when something isn’t right is critical when working with AI agents.
Q: Many organisations are experimenting with AI but struggling to scale. What’s holding them back?
Luís Faceira: Most pilots fall into the category of “human replacement”, which involves swapping a human doing a repetitive task with an AI agent. In some cases, this can lead to failure because AI isn’t perfectly deterministic. Another real challenge is organisational. Bureaucracy, compliance, and internal processes often lag behind AI progress, so by the time a pilot is ready, it’s already outdated.
There are two more effective uses of AI: “human augmentation,” where humans use new tools to become 2 to 10 times more efficient, and “symbiotic redesign,” which involves fundamentally rethinking processes to incorporate agents.
Q: Can you share a real-world example of AI delivering impact?
Luís Faceira: We worked with Parfois, a global fashion retailer, to redesign its quality assurance process. Instead of simply automating tasks, we restructured the workflow using multiple AI agents: an analyst agent to handle exploratory, non-deterministic tasks, and a programming agent to convert validated outputs into executable, deterministic code.
With a human in the loop to validate results, this new model enabled a team of three people to do the work that previously required nearly 30 people.
That’s the power of symbiotic redesign. It’s not just efficiency gains, it’s a completely new way of working.
Q: What advice would you give to IT leaders trying to unlock value from AI?
Luís Faceira: First, embrace continuous experimentation. Every team should dedicate time to testing new use cases because the technology evolves so quickly. Second, don’t draw fixed conclusions too early. What doesn’t work today might work in a few months.
And finally, focus on rethinking processes, not just tools. The biggest opportunities come from redesigning how work gets done, not simply automating what already exists.
Final thoughts
As enterprise AI moves beyond hype, leaders face a clear choice: experiment and evolve, or risk falling behind. Luís Faceira’s message is clear: success with AI isn’t just about technology, it’s about mindset, experience, and the willingness to rethink everything.
