Your AI Just Got Eyes on Your Business (and MCP is why)
What’s my next meeting today?
Who’s the client?
Have they paid their invoices?
Three different systems or one AI to rule them all?
Well, it’s starting to be the latter.
Let me show you how.
The demo
I asked Claude: what’s my next meeting today?
It looked at my calendar, and said: your next meeting is with this client. And by the way, they have an outstanding invoice, here’s the number.
I copied the invoice number and said: find me the details on this invoice.
It went to Xero, found the invoice, and came back with everything I needed.
One AI.
Multiple systems.
No tab switching.
I want to be honest: I edited out the waiting time in my demo video. It wasn’t as fast as it looked.
But it worked. And that’s the point.
What’s happening under the hood?
What’s powering this capability is the concept of MCP servers.
Think of it like a USB connector.
Any app: Xero, QBO, your calendar, your CRM, your SharePoint, can build an MCP server.
That’s basically a plug that lets any AI ask it questions, and even ask it to act on the data.
If the app has one, AI can connect. Securely.
That’s all it is. A USB for AI.
And now, all the apps are setting up their MCP servers. It’s new. Some of them have it, some not yet, some servers are comprehensive and powerful, some quite limited.
So can we go and connect everything now?
No. Not yet.
Did you notice that I used Claude in my demo?
I really wanted to demonstrate this in Microsoft Copilot.
But the connectors in Copilot are still clunky.
I spent time trying to set it up. I paid a developer to figure it out.
They came back with a known issue that stops it from working with Copilot now.
This is the Pioneer Tax, by the way.
It’s what happens when we try to use things when they’re very new, and not quite ready.
So I ended up using Claude, because right now it’s much easier to set up connections into other systems.
And if you have sharp eyes, you may have noticed something else.
When Claude asked questions about Xero, we didn’t see the Xero logo.
We saw Zapier.
That’s because of some (probably temporary) technical limitations with the Xero MCP server, which meant that it was easier (but more limited) to set up through Zapier.
So yes: This is emerging, and it’s important.
But it’s not plug-and-play across the board yet.
Where it works, and it does for some of the apps I am using, it is magic ✨
What this means for your business
This one is a combination of ‘watch and wait’ and ‘start using’.
When you look at your AI app: Copilot, Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or other, you will see a Connectors option.
Those connectors that you can set up through there are ready for you to use.
Click, authorise, done. It’s working.
If you have to work harder to set it up, like I did for this demo, you are playing in the ‘emerging’ space. Maybe watch and wait.
And yes, Copilot makes it a bit harder to set up connectors.
For good reasons. Governance reasons.
If you want to link this into our conversation of ‘when will AI do my tax return’ or ‘draft the contract or advice for me’, remember we spoke about three bridges:
Playbooks
Deep context
Hands
This technology, MCP, progresses the deep context bridge and the hands bridge.
Want to go deeper on this with me?
If you want to experiment with connectors, deep context, and what’s actually mature now, come join me.
there are two ways:
You can bring me in to run a private briefing or workshop in your business.
You can join my public webinars and workshops here inbal.com.au/events
—
Inbal Rodnay
Guiding Firms in AI Adoption and Automation
Keynote speaker | AI Workshops | Executive briefings | The Tech Savvy Firm
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