Week 1: Operations Audit
Finding where AI actually helps
Today’s topics
- How established companies differ from startups
- Building business cases that work
- Mapping your current operations
- Spotting worthwhile opportunities
The established business difference
- Legacy infrastructure serving real customers
- Teams with established workflows
- Service commitments requiring consistency
- Business data trapped in systems
The expensive mistake
Trying to automate every process you find.
AI projects fail when companies pick wrong work to automate.
Figure out what is worth automating first.
Where AI creates value
- Repetitive work requiring judgment
- Pattern detection across large datasets
- High-volume language tasks
- Consistency in customer communications
Where AI wastes money
- Work requiring extensive business context
- Highly variable processes
- Relationship-dependent work
- Decisions with compliance risk
Calculate first
- What does this cost today?
- How much improvement is realistic?
- What will implementation cost?
- What does maintenance run?
Map before automating
Every process has three components:
- Inputs: What triggers the work
- Processing: Steps to complete it
- Outputs: What gets produced
Where time goes
- Direct work time
- Waiting periods
- Rework cycles
- Coordination overhead
Quality problems AI solves
- Inconsistent customer responses
- Data entry mistakes
- Forgotten follow-up tasks
- Knowledge trapped in people’s heads
Integration difficulty
Rate system connection complexity:
- Simple: Standalone work
- Moderate: One or two systems
- Complex: Three or more systems
The opportunity matrix
Plot processes on two dimensions:
- Horizontal: Value if improved
- Vertical: Difficulty to implement
Quick wins
- Drafting email responses
- Generating weekly reports
- Summarizing documents
- Cleaning data before entry
Strategic plays
- Intelligent customer service
- Document processing
- Predictive analytics
- Quality control automation
Workshop: Process inventory
- List 20-30 major processes
- Note biggest pain point for each
- Estimate weekly time and monthly cost
- Rate AI suitability (1-5 scale)
Workshop: Top opportunities
For your five highest-rated processes:
- Current state metrics and costs
- Desired future state with numbers
- Integration needs
- Resource requirements
Key takeaway
Pick the right opportunities, not the most advanced technology.
Audit thoroughly. Prioritize on clear value. Build from wins.