A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

AI

The first-ever AI ChatBot made for newsagents

In a first for newsagents in Australia, newsXpress quietly launched its AI ChatBot made for newsagents a few months ago.  Last week, to released a major update.

This newsagent ChatBot uses closed-loop AI technology. What that means is that it only answers what it knows, what it has been trained in. It answers questions you ask in a regular way – as if you are asking a person. Here are some of the topics it has been trained in:

  • Wage rates based on the current Retail Industry Award.
  • Retail employee classification advice based on the work they do.
  • How to deal with a difficult employee.
  • Steps to take if you think theft is an issue.
  • What insurance policy to consider.
  • Checking your EFTPOS rate.
  • How to dismiss someone within the law.
  • How to negotiate with your landlord.
  • How to deal with cashflow challenges.
  • How to go about selling your newsagency.
  • Ways to improve your business.
  • How the business is performing compared to others.
  • New products to consider.
  • Which supplier stocks this or that.
  • Where to seek mental health support.

The ChatBot covers many more topics that this. It can also read any report you provide it and give you insights as it sees them.

This is a groundbreaking resource for local small business newsagents and other retailers newsXpress serves. It’s not happened overnight. the work started years ago with the careful development of a searchable knowledge base for newsXpress members. That was the foundational basis. In 2025, the knowledge base was expanded and every existing article reviewed, and updated.

In 2026, each knowledge base article was reviewed again, categorised and new articles developed.

Next, access to FairWork, the Retail Industry Award and other publicly available resources were added, to ensure that advice provided was based on appropriate source material.

During the testing phase many questions were asked, and the answers checked for usefulness and accuracy.

This meticulous process resulted in a knowledgeable newsagents can trust, and use 24/7 to get answers to questions they would otherwise ask on the phone.

This is smart AI backed technology helping newsagents save time and learn tools that will help elsewhere in their business.

AI ChatBots like this one from newsXpress are the future. They help businesses operate efficiently and, through this efficiency, deliver quality services at a lower cost.

If you call someone for advice, you will get an answer with a natural human bias. The newsXpress ChatBot focuses on the answer, without the human bias. This can be important for the types of questions that I see newsagents asking.

…

Footnote: I am a director of newsXpress Pty Ltd.

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AI

What AI found in one shop’s sales file

I have been testing the newly announced newsXpress AI business performance analysis service with a few different shops and it is fascinating what it discovers, that the retailers love.

In each case, the retailer invested a few minutes to run a report and answer a couple of quick questions. The skilled and carefully prompted AI did the rest of the work.

What the retailer got back was immediately actionable, quickly money making.

One retailer found a new product category they had never considered, something they can trial for monomial cost but that, if it works as expected will be a game changer, that’s what they called it, a game changer.

Another retailer retail was direct: this is the kick up the arse I needed.

Another retailer didn’t believe the insights and advice. Two days later they came back saying they had done their own research and \had to apologise because the report was right. How could it know?, they asked. That’s the secret sauce here – discovering the unknown about local retail businesses and helping them make good decisions quickly.

Another retailer was amazed at the ToDo list. This would have taken me days to research and put together. That was weeks ago. The made half the changes and are already making more money as a result.

These are true stories that have come from the AI services that newsXpress is now offering to other retailers, not just newsagents.

This has changed how I see my business was the response from the most skeptical retailer we worked with. They thought AI was a gimmick and only became involved in the trial reluctantly..

None of this is magic, and none of it required new software. The numbers were sitting in the POS all along, the way they are sitting in yours right now. Every shop’s system quietly records what sells, when, at what margin, alongside what does not sell at all. What has been missing is not the data. It is the time and the tools to ask the data anything useful. AI has made the asking fast and cheap, if you know how to ask.

Teaching retailers how to ask is exactly what the AI training packs do, on your data, live and one on one. The snapshot is the free taste of it.

The offer stands this month: send a sales extract from your POS, any POS, and one page comes back showing what AI can see in your numbers. No charge, no obligation, and most owners are surprised by something on the page.

Start here: help@newsxpress.com.au.

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AI

Beyond the hype: why I travelled to Singapore for SuperAI

Today, I am at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore for the opening day of SuperAI, Asia’s largest AI conference. Over the next two days, some of the most influential people working in technology will be here. Actually, it kicked off yesterday with some side sessions that were terrific.

I want to be clear about why I made the trip.

This was not tech tourism. It was not about watching demos of products that will not ship for three years. It was a practical decision driven by a straightforward observation: for anyone running or supporting a small business retail network right now, understanding where AI is headed has stopped being optional.

The conversation has shifted

What made SuperAI worth the flight is that this conference has moved on from where most AI events still are. Frontier lab demonstrations and theoretical research discussions are elsewhere. Here, the focus is on real-world deployment — how organisations are running AI tools at scale, what is working operationally, and what the actual results look like on the ground.

In local retail, we are already seeing tangible results. I am in my shop. Plenty others are too.

Automated invoice processing is saving small businesses hours of manual data entry every week. AI-driven inventory insights are surfacing patterns that would never appear in a standard report. These are not pilot projects. They are running in shops now.

But we have barely started.

What I am here to find

Being here gives me a clearer view of what is coming before it arrives. Three areas I am focused on across the two days:

  • Inventory autonomy — how autonomous agents are predicting stock trends, managing supply chain variability, and cutting dead stock without requiring specialist skills to operate
  • Accessible data insights — how complex business analysis is being simplified so a local shop owner gets deep, actionable information without needing a data analyst to interpret it
  • Operational efficiency — which tools are removing friction from back-office administration so independent retailers spend less time on screens and more time on the floor

Why this matters for local retail

The tools demonstrated at events like this do not stay at the enterprise level. They filter into the software platforms small businesses use every day. The gap between what a large retailer can do with data and what an independent newsagent or gift shop can do is closing faster than most people realise.

Being here on day one means seeing what is coming before it lands. That lead time is the point. The goal is to bring what is genuinely useful home and turn it into something practical for local businesses — not eventually, but as soon as it is ready.

… Mark Fletcher is the CEO of newsXpress and founder of Tower Systems, a POS software company serving independent retailers across Australia.

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2026
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