.png)
In Brief
Taylor Radey, Director of Research at SmarterX, used a multi-tool AI workflow to produce the 2026 State of AI for Business Report, a 25-page, data-driven research document, in one day.
The same project used to take hundreds of hours. The real story is what happened with her extra time.
What Happened
SmarterX has run a state-of-the-industry AI report for five years through Marketing AI Institute and SmarterX, surveying hundreds and then thousands of marketers and business leaders on AI adoption. This year, the team expanded the survey beyond marketing to cover every function inside a business. It just closed it with more than 2,100 responses, the largest sample in the report's history.
Taylor Radey, Director of Research at SmarterX, is leading the report this year. In the report's early years, the manual analysis and writing took hundreds of hours. In 2024 and 2025, AI cut that down to a few dozen hours. This year, Radey produced the full 25-page report in a day, another order-of-magnitude compression.
What changed wasn't just the efficiency. The hours that used to go into manual processing got reinvested into asking smarter questions of the data and building out activation across sales, customer success, AI Academy, and external channels, work that historically didn't get done because the report itself took so much time to produce.
Mike Kaput, Chief Content Officer at SmarterX, shared Radey's use case on Episode 211 of The Artificial Intelligence Show with founder and CEO Paul Roetzer.
The Key Numbers
5 years - How long SmarterX has been doing the annual State of AI report
2,100+ - Survey responses this year, the largest sample in the report's history
Hundreds of hours - Time it took to produce the report manually in early years
A few dozen hours - Time it took to produce it in 2024 and 2025 with some AI assistance
A day - Time it took to produce it this year with a multi-tool AI workflow
25 pages - Length of the final report
When AI & Humans Get Better at the Process
The unlock is process, not prompts. Most people use AI like an answer engine, one chat window, one prompt, one hope for brilliance. Radey's approach is closer to project management. She orchestrates multiple AI tools in parallel, each playing a specific role: aggregating context upfront, running deep research to fill gaps, using reasoning models for synthesis and long-form drafting, and verifying every claim. That structure is what makes a 25-page research deliverable possible in a day.
Time saved is not the win. The trap with a workflow like this is treating the speed-up as the finish line. Radey and the SmarterX team did the opposite. The extra hours got rerouted into sharper questions, deeper analysis, and activation work across internal teams and external channels. The goal this year is a report roughly 10 times better than last year's, not just one delivered faster.
Recurring use cases improve the output each year. SmarterX has applied AI to parts of this report for several years running. Each cycle the models improve, the workflow gets sharper, and the team's expertise running it deepens. The result is a multiplier that keeps growing on the same project, on the same timeline, with the same team. Each year, the AI and the humans get better.
"As someone who has personally spent hundreds of hours in pivot tables building that report, I love to hear the stories of how we are solving for making it more efficient."
— Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of SmarterX, on Episode 211 of The Artificial Intelligence Show
See Taylor walk through her exact process
Radey is presenting her workflow at the AI for Writers Summit 2026, the annual virtual event built around the theme "Writing is Being Reimagined." The May 7 summit is virtual and free to attend.
In her session, Radey will pull back the curtain on how she produced the 2026 State of AI for Business Report, a 25-page, data-driven research report, by orchestrating multiple AI tools in parallel. She'll walk through the specific decisions that shaped her workflow and break down her end-to-end process: how she aggregated context upfront, used reasoning models for synthesis and long-form drafting, ran deep research to fill gaps, and verified every claim. Attendees walk away with a practical, repeatable approach to tackling their own complex writing projects with AI, whether they're producing reports, long-form content, or anything that demands research, structure, and editorial judgment.
About Taylor Radey: Taylor Radey is the Director of Research at SmarterX, where she leads original research on how artificial intelligence is transforming work, business, and society. She also serves as an instructor supporting AI Academy by SmarterX and the AI Mastery Membership, translating research into learning experiences for professionals navigating rapid change. She spent more than 15 years advising teams on digital strategy, growth, and change management. That experience continues to shape her approach today: grounded, practical, and focused on real-world application.
SmarterX Take
The meta-lesson is about which projects to apply AI to first. Recurring projects, the ones that come around every year, every quarter, every month, are where the compounding happens. A one-off task gets done faster once. A recurring task gets done faster, then better, then bigger, then differently, year after year.
The companies that pick their highest-stakes work that they do consistently, and apply AI to it deliberately, will compound the most. Work such as annual reports, quarterly reviews, weekly content cycles. That repetition and familiarity helps you keep iterating and improving each time.
What to Watch
What teams do with the time AI gives back. The split between organizations getting real value from AI and those just running faster on the same treadmill comes down to whether saved hours get reinvested into deeper, better work or quietly absorbed into the same expectations. Radey's team chose to reinvest.
The activation gap. For most organizations, producing "the report" take up so much time that activation, internal enablement, sales support, distribution, never happen. AI workflows such as Radey's open that capacity. Teams that move fast to take advantage of it will see benefits their competitors don't.
Further Reading
AI for Writers Summit 2026, May 7, virtual and free → marketingaiinstitute.com
AI Academy by SmarterX → academy.smarterx.ai
Heard on The Artificial Intelligence Show, Episode 211
Paul Roetzer and Mike Kaput discuss how Taylor Radey compressed a months-long research report into a day, and what it means for any team doing recurring AI work. Listen →
Mike Kaput
Mike Kaput is the Chief Content Officer at SmarterX and a leading voice on the application of AI in business. He is the co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence and co-host of The Artificial Intelligence Show podcast.