I am trying to carve out time to think about how AI can benefit me. This is not a selfish exercise as it is an effort to understand how AI can help my customers. The are several ways to approach this. One would be to listen to all the current press about AI and how it will eliminate office jobs which translates into thinking about why jobs would disappear. This is what might be called reactionary thinking.
A second approach might be to consider how current processes work and how those could be changed or eliminated with the implementation of AI. This is what might be called linear thinking. But how about a third option, considering the aspects of your current job that you don’t like to do and handing those off to AI? This is what could be called Win Win thinking.
So back to my customers and how AI could help them. Our company provides three essential solutions. First is a workflow solution helping automate the collection, review and approval of information for contracts, wire transfers, budgets, etc. Second is a critical document archive solution to store and retrieve the supporting documentation for those decision approvals, aka your business artifacts. Third is a service to capture, organize and normalize years of historical artifacts, digital or paper.
Within the realm of workflow, I suspect the act of finding, attaching and uploading supporting documentation is not users favorite task. Using AI to present additional supporting or dissenting information could be very useful in say a contract workflow. What information can be found about the vendor or the main principals of the vendor that either support or contradict approving the contract? This could be from internal sources or could also include information found on the internet.
It’s easier to understand what users don’t like to do on the critical document archive solution. Users don’t like to tag or add meta data to documents, which describe the document sufficiently so that the next user can easily find it. This takes some time and effort. Using AI to pre-tag a document would be very helpful and save all important time. Theoretically, adding meta data to documents may not even be needed if AI can power your document search.
Possibly the biggest bang will come from the always dreaded network drive cleanup and reorganization. Nobody likes to do this much less have the time, but every company wants to and understands the value of doing it. AI could definitely benefit this process especially when the AI engine is trained against a previously tagged set of similar data. Even if the data is only pre-tagged, it would save hundreds if not thousands of hours of manual time.
Focusing on the aspects of AI that are currently circulating in the press is not going to help you pinpoint workflow improvements you can take advantage of. Linear thinking may find some uses but will likely miss the biggest opportunities for game changing solutions. Thinking about all the things you don’t like to do in your job will be Win Win. A win for you obviously, but a win for your company because now your skills are focused on what you do best.
At imkore we specialize in the delivery of a next generation technology, managed services, and advisory platform. Get in touch today to learn more on how you can embrace AI within your organization and utilize Win Win thinking. info@imkore.com https://www.imkore.com/