Scaling AI Adoption Across The AA with ChatGPT Enterprise
How The AA, OpenAI, Cognita Reply and Avvio Reply built a structured, organisation-wide enablement programme that turned early experimentation into confident, community-led adoption.
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The challenge
Move 1,500 employees from fragmented AI experimentation to confident, productive AI use across the business.
SCENARIO
Building on early generative AI experimentation
The AA (Automobile Association) is one of the UK's largest and most recognised brands: a roadside assistance and motoring services provider with over 14 million members. They had been experimenting with generative AI for twelve months — obtaining around 400 licences for an AI platform scattered across the business, testing a handful of partner-led proofs-of-concept — but without a coherent model for adoption, application, or measurement.
As the strategic importance of AI became clearer, the organisation established a central AI team to lead enterprise AI strategy, use case delivery, governance and enablement. A structured pilot evaluated ChatGPT Enterprise against the incumbent platform, and ChatGPT Enterprise was selected. This was driven by OpenAI's pace of innovation, the quality of the user experience, and strong employee preference.
But selecting the platform was the starting point, not the finish line. The AA's workforce contains a wide range of roles spanning roadside patrols, contact centres, insurance, and driving schools. Many of whom work in operational, customer-facing or regulated environments where the practical value of generative AI was not immediately obvious. The real challenge was not simply giving people access to ChatGPT Enterprise. It was building the confidence, capability, governance and organisational permission for colleagues to use it safely and productively in their day-to-day work.
THE SOLUTION
A structured enablement programme for different roles
The AA partnered with Cognita Reply and Avvio Reply to design an enablement programme built around confidence and capability rather than a static library of prompts. A discovery phase grounded the approach in the realities of different business functions, bringing leadership and functional teams together to translate generic AI training into the specifics of finance, procurement, and other areas — moving the conversation beyond drafting emails towards automating the repetitive, manual work that absorbs the most time.
Underpinning the programme was a deliberate focus on narrative and identity: a clear AI story, consistent leadership communications, and a structured AI Champions and ambassador community supported by a collaboration hub on Microsoft Teams.
HOW WE DID IT
A layered enablement approach
Enablement was delivered through a layered model. Foundational training built broad-based capability across the business. Advanced sessions for a smaller power-user cohort moved beyond content generation and research into the platform's analytical capabilities and the building of custom GPTs. One-to-one leadership sessions strengthened top-down sponsorship and gave senior leaders the confidence to create space for experimentation, failure, and shared learning. Hackathons, a format new to much of the workforce, introduced a faster, more experimental rhythm of innovation.
1,000+
colleagues trained
across foundational, advanced, and Champions sessions, with close to 2,500 people-hours of training delivered between December 2025 and March 2026
29% → 63%
active adoption
more than doubling among licence holders in three months as the programme scaled across the business
5.5x growth
in active GPTs
from 117 to 650 active custom GPTs in the same window, evidencing employees building reusable solutions
Federated
AI capability
with a central AI Champions community now driving innovation and knowledge sharing within functions, supported by a collaboration hub that has shifted from centrally prompted to community-owned
The AA is the UK's leading provider of roadside assistance, serving 14 million members with approximately 2,700 patrols attending an average of 9,000 breakdowns daily. Its mission is to create confidence for drivers now and for the future — anticipating drivers' needs since 1905. The AA provides services across its roadside businesses from AA Driving School and BSM, to DriveTech, the leader in driver education, alongside AA Smart Care, AA Cars, and an insurance brokerage operating a diverse panel of underwriters including an in-house underwriter.
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Its mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI develops the GPT family of large language models and ChatGPT, used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. ChatGPT Enterprise provides organisations with enterprise-grade security, privacy, and administrative controls.
Cognita Reply is where OpenAI innovation meets enterprise transformation. We help organisations reimagine how they work, decide, and innovate — not just by adopting tools, but by embedding AI as a strategic capability across their value chain. As part of the Reply Group and a recognised OpenAI Service Partner, we bring deep expertise, early access to new technologies, and accelerators that make AI adoption faster, safer, and measurable. With a focus on governance, scalability, and human-centered design, we deliver secure, practical AI solutions that drive lasting business impact.
Avvio Reply is the leading creative agency in Employee Experience and Engagement. We work in partnership with major brands and across many organisational teams, including HR, Internal Communications, IT and Marketing.