So, you’ve got the basics in order (see How to get started with AI: the six step framework) and you know what you and your people can accomplish with AI. You’ve learned about the capabilities of AI, organized training for your people, investigated whether your organization is AI-ready and maybe you’ve selected a partner to guide you through (parts of) the rest of the process
Next up: getting some ideas on what business processes to automate with AI tools. And right there, I’m going to slow you down a bit. AI is cool, everyone is implementing it and … it’s seriously overhyped. There was a Forbes article recently about “AI washing” that pointed out some obvious flaws in how companies are adopting (or seem to adopt) AI technology.
We believe in a “business-first” approach rather than an “AI-first” approach. This means that first of all, you should look at the business cases that you need to tackle first and then consider if AI is the right solution. So keep cool and let’s look at those business problems that need to be solved first.
So, how do you get insights into the business cases that need to be solved? There are two strategies that we propose, and the good news is: you can do both. There’s a top-down approach using workshops and there’s a bottom-up approach where you support your employees to come up with improvements for their tasks.
Top-down: workshops
A time tested strategy for coming up with ideas is for a few people to go into a room and brainstorm. Here at SUMSUM we have a structured approach to brainstorming: our AI workshop. During this workshop you’ll identify problems within your organization, try to come up with (AI) solutions and pitch these solutions to the other participants in the workshop. You can then vote on what solutions have the most promise and should be investigated further.
Below is a description of a 2 hour workshop which you can set up yourself. The workshops we organize tend to take a whole day during which there is more time to work out the different steps more thoroughly.
Most of the workshop activities are team assignments. Ideally you have 9 participants (3 teams) and one facilitator (you). You could do the workshop with as few as 6 or as many as 12 but try to stay as close as possible to 9.
We also have printable templates for the participants to fill out which you can download from our website. You can also keep our website close for some inspiration on what problems can be solved with AI.
Business problems and goals
The first half hour (roughly) of the workshop is aimed towards identifying the problems that could be solved and to narrow down those parts of the business processes that are the most problematic. This involves writing down and selecting the business problems, voting on those that are of the highest priority, defining the goals and mapping out the current reality. The next hour is spent formulating the solutions and preparing a pitch.
Finally, the last half hour is spent pitching the three solutions (1 for each team) and voting on which one to pursue first.
An example agenda for a 2 hour workshop
| Time |
Activity |
| 9:00 |
Define the problem - individual task
Start the workshop off with a stack of post-it notes. Every participant has to write down two problems in your organization, each on a single post-it note and place that note on a wall in your meeting room.
Here are some examples of common business problems:
- We don’t understand our customer needs
- We miss project deadlines
- There is insufficient knowledge sharing
- We don’t have clear insights into our customer segments…
|
| 9:05 |
Vote on the problems and form teams - individual task
Next all participants can give two votes to the problem(s) that are the most pressing to them. They can place two votes on one problem or one vote on two problems. Participants can ask for clarification on the contents of the post-it notes.
|
| 9:10 |
Define the goal - group task
Here you write down what, for your organization, are the main goals (with regards to customers and with regards to employees) and what situations you want to avoid. Try to describe these in a SMART way.
E.g.
- We want our customers to spend 20% more on the website by the end of the year
- We want our employees to have produced 1 ton of waste less by this time next year
- We want to avoid complaints of quality issues on social media
There’s a “Define the goal” template in the downloadable PDF for this assignment. Depending on the facilities you have available, you can project it, print it on a poster, or draw it on a flip chart. As the facilitator, write down the goals as they are discussed by the participants. Keep the goals visible during the next task.
|
| 9:15 |
Map the current reality - team task
Now is a good time to split the participants up into teams (3 participants max per team) and assign each team one of the problems selected in the first step.
Also hand out the “The current situation” template from the downloadable PDF to each of the teams.
This is how they should complete the template:
This template should describe the business process where the “problem”, assigned to the team, resides.
- Target user roles: who interacts with the business process
- Main business benefit: which of the business goals described in the previous step does this process solve
- Actions: make a small drawing or flowchart of the process
- Painpoints: in the process, mark the locations where there’s a specific pain point and write a short description of the problem
|
| 9:35 |
Brainstorming with AI - team task
For this task, hand out the “Brainstorming with AI” template. This template continues on the “Map the current reality”.
This is how each of the teams should complete this part of the template:
- Simple solution: is there a “simple” i.e. non-AI way of solving this problem? Try to give a very short description here or just mark it as “yes” (there is a non-AI solution).
- AI capabilities: if there is no simple solution, how can an AI tool help with relieving this pain? Take a look at the “Brainstorming with AI” inset to come up with ideas.
|
| 9:55 |
Break |
| 10:00 |
Create a Pitch - team task
For this task, hand out the “Concept pitch” template.
Now the teams can start to prepare a 5-minute pitch of one of their proposed solutions. In the next two articles, we’ll introduce a method for selecting use cases.
They can use the template to refine their solution:
- Name: name the solution
- Challenges / optimizations: refer back to the Map the current reality / Brainstorming with AI exercises and describe what’s being solved
- Main capabilities and expected output: describe what the AI tool will do and what output it will produce
- Data: go into more detail on what the data needs are for the AI tool. What is needed to train the tool? What is needed to run the tool? Is this data accessible? Do we store results and if so, where?
- Limitations: what limitations are there to the system? Are there any ethical or privacy concerns (EU AI Act, GDPR, …)? An AI system is never perfect, how will we handle the 20% or so of cases the AI can’t?
|
| 10:30 |
Pitching the use cases - group task
Each team will give a 5-minute presentation of the pain point they’re trying to solve and what their solution looks like. After each presentation, there’s 5 minutes to discuss the solution with all the participants.
|
| 11:00 |
End |
Individual task: a workshop task that each participant has to do on their own
Team task: a task that participants work on in small groups (max 3 per team)
Group task: a task that all the participants work on collectively
Brainstorming with AI:
Use OpenAI’s ChatGPT to come up with ideas to resolve this problem. Use this prompt template and fill in the details from the pain points you’re working on:
Give me 5 use case ideas for implementing AI for the following user journey:
User: [Fill in user role]
Stage: [Fill in process step]
Task: [Fill in task description]
Pain point: [Fill in pain point for this task]
[Repeat “Stage”]
|
Bottom-up: employee participation
Another great way to find problems to solve is to enable your employees to not only identify problems but also to let them come up with the solutions. This requires that you give them some level of autonomy and the tools and means to make the business case and try out their ideas.
There are many advantages to this approach: There is greater employee participation in improving the company, you get very concrete problems and solutions, there is greater employee buy-in when a solution is rolled out, …
This is how you can facilitate this process:
- Ask employees for ideas
- Give them support to work out the business case (if you don’t have a business analyst on staff consider hiring a consultant for a limited time e.g. 16 hours per case you want to support)
- Support them to do some self-experimentation (if you don’t have someone technical with AI experience on staff, consider hiring a consultant for a limited time e.g. 24 hours per case you want to support)
- Keep track of all initiatives
Do keep in mind that you will have to give your employees sufficient time to work on the business case and do the self experimentation. On the other hand, don’t be afraid to timebox their effort and set a deadline on their work.
In the next two chapters, we’ll go into more detail on scoring, tracking and selecting use cases. Do contact us if you’d like us to organize an AI workshop at your premises. Our full day AI workshops are facilitated by experienced professionals and offer:
- An inspirational keynote
- Additional techniques to formulate business goals, values, problems, …
- Flash cards with use cases, AI capabilities, …
- A more in-depth investigation of your problems and solutions
- A report on all topics that were discussed.
In the next chapter, we're going to assess the feasibility and business value of each of our ideas.
