Process Improvement with AI: A Guide

By Atom
April 10th, 2024

In today’s business landscape, AI is transforming how we improve processes, making operations more efficient and cost-effective. From automating mundane tasks to enhancing decision-making with predictive analytics, AI is at the forefront of driving business success. This guide dives into the essentials of leveraging AI for process improvement, including:

The importance of quality data and how to prepare it
Mapping out current processes to identify areas for AI integration
Setting clear goals and success metrics
A step-by-step approach to implementing AI, from automating routine tasks to streamlining entire processes
Real-world case studies from companies like Shell and JP Morgan Chase
Navigating challenges, including data privacy and ensuring employee adoption

By understanding these key areas, businesses can harness AI to not only streamline operations but also unlock new opportunities for innovation and growth.

Navigating This Guide

This guide gives you tips on how to use AI to improve your business. Here’s what we’ll cover:

What you need to start using AI
Step-by-step help on adding AI to your business
Examples of businesses doing great things with AI
Common problems and how to fix them
Final tips

With this guide, business leaders can learn how to use AI to make their operations run smoother, work more efficiently, and come up with new ideas.

Understanding AI and Process Improvement

Defining Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is about making computers do things that usually need human brains, like understanding pictures, recognizing speech, or making decisions. AI uses different methods, such as machine learning, where computers learn and get better from data without someone telling them what to do every step of the way.

In simple terms, AI systems are trained with lots of data to spot patterns and make guesses or choices. The more good-quality data they have, the smarter they get over time. With the growth of computer power, AI can now do some tasks as well as, or even better than, humans.

The Evolution of Business Process Improvement

Back in the 1990s, new tech like enterprise planning systems and the internet started changing how businesses improved their processes. This meant making big changes from start to finish in how things were done, like how orders were filled or new products were made. But, these big projects didn’t always work out as hoped.

Now, AI is bringing new life to improving how businesses work. It’s a tool that can be used in many industries to redesign how work is done, make repetitive tasks automatic, and help make better decisions with data. For instance, process mining can look through data to find where things are slowing down, and machine learning can take over tasks that follow set rules.

When AI is used with other technologies like robotic process automation (RPA), it opens up new possibilities for changing business operations in ways we haven’t seen before. More businesses are seeing how AI can help them work more efficiently, cut costs, and improve how people experience their services. This means people from IT, operations, and different parts of the business need to work together on big projects that use AI to change how things are done.

The Prerequisites

Before you start using AI to make your business processes better, you need to have a few things ready:

Ensuring Access to Quality Data

Good data is key for making AI work well. Here’s how to get it right:

Gather data from everywhere it’s stored: Pull together information from all the places like databases and customer management systems that are part of the processes you’re looking to improve.
Clean up your data: Fix mistakes, get rid of duplicates, and deal with any missing information. Make sure your data is organized.
Label your data: Mark your data with tags that show steps in the process or outcomes. This is important for training AI that needs to know this stuff.
Keep collecting data: As time goes on, keep adding new and different data. The more data you have, the better AI can learn and get smarter.

Mapping Out Existing Processes

It’s important to know how things work now before you try to make them better with AI. Here’s how:

Draw your processes: Make a visual map that shows all the steps of your processes from beginning to end, including what goes in, what comes out, and where decisions are made.
Use process mining: This is a tool that helps you automatically make a map of your processes by looking at the digital footprints left by your systems. It shows you how things are really done.
Talk to your team: Have conversations with people in different roles to understand their challenges and ideas for making things better.

Writing down your processes helps you see where you can make the biggest improvements.

Defining Goals and Success Metrics

It’s important to know what you want to achieve with AI and how you’ll know if you’re successful:

Quantitative goals: For example, "Reduce customer wait times by 20%". This makes it easier to see if the AI is worth the investment.
Qualitative goals: For example, "Make sure we follow all the rules better". This helps you see benefits that aren’t just about money.
Key metrics: Choose measures that match your goals, like how long customers have to wait, to track if you’re hitting your targets.

Setting clear goals and ways to measure them keeps your AI projects focused and lets you see how well they’re doing.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Identifying Opportunities

First, use tools to check out how your current processes are doing. These tools can help spot where things are slow or messy, like:

Tasks that are done by hand over and over
Steps where mistakes happen often
Parts that take too long to finish
Areas that are hard to keep an eye on

By finding these spots, you can see where using AI to automate or improve things might help.

Step 2: Automating Routine Tasks

A lot of everyday tasks are great for AI to take over:

Putting data into systems
Handling paperwork
Answering common customer questions
Checking and approving things
Keeping track of stock

Tools that automate these tasks, like RPA, can do them based on set rules. This lets your team work on more important stuff.

Step 3: Enhancing Decision Making

AI can really help with making better choices:

It can predict what might happen next.
Suggest the best steps to take.
Let you try out different choices and see their effects.

Using AI along with your own judgment can lead to smarter decisions.

Step 4: Applying Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics can be used in many ways:

Spot risks early.
Guess future sales or performance.
Make better decisions about prices and stock.
Offer customers things they might like.

This helps you plan better and keep improving.

Step 5: Improving Customer Service

AI can make customers happier by:

Chatbots that answer questions any time.
Understanding how customers feel about your service.
Predicting what customers might want.
Giving personalized suggestions and deals.

This leads to happier customers who stick around longer.

Step 6: Streamlining End-to-End Processes

Using different tech together can make your whole process smoother:

Process mining shows you how things are running
RPA handles the routine stuff
AI helps make better choices
Analytics checks how well everything is doing

When you combine these, your business can work more smoothly, save money, and get things done faster.

Case Studies

Shell

Shell is a big company that deals with energy like oil and gas. They’ve started using AI and robots to check their equipment more efficiently. Before, people had to physically go and inspect machinery, which took a lot of time and still missed some problems.

Now, they use drones and robots that can see and sense issues on their own. This tech spots problems and tells the team what needs fixing right away. Here’s what changed:

Inspections are done 90% faster.
Experts can now do more important work instead of just inspections.
There’s less risk of getting hurt on the job.
They can fix things before they break down.

Shell is planning to use these robots everywhere to keep a constant watch, which helps things run smoothly for longer.

JP Morgan Chase

JP Morgan Chase is a big bank that deals with huge amounts of money every day. One of their big tasks is going through legal documents, which takes a lot of time.

They made COiN, an AI tool, to help read and understand these documents quickly. It picks out the important parts and shows them to the team, making sure they don’t miss anything risky.

Here’s what it helped them do:

Go through about 12,000 contracts every year.
Save around 360,000 hours of work.
Make 25% fewer mistakes.
Answer clients faster.

With COiN, the bank can do things more efficiently and let their legal team focus on more critical tasks. They’re working on making COiN even better and using it in more areas of their business. Automation and AI are helping them stay ahead in the competitive world of banking.

Overcoming Challenges

Implementing AI to make business processes better can bring up some issues. But with good planning and help from experts, you can get past these hurdles.

Data Privacy and Security

When we use data to teach AI, people worry about their privacy. It’s important to be clear about what data you’re collecting and what it’s for. You should have strict rules that cover:

The specific data you’re collecting
How you keep personal info safe
Who can see the data
Following laws like GDPR

Try to make data anonymous where you can. Use strong protection like encryption, control who can access data, and have good security. Having a group that checks on ethics can help make sure you’re doing things right. With the right steps, you can keep data safe and still use AI.

Integration with Legacy Systems

Mixing new AI with old systems can be tricky. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it could cause big problems.

It’s a good idea to get help from experts who can:

Map out your current systems
Find any issues with mixing old and new
Plan a safe and effective way to connect everything
Deal with any tech problems that come up

Although it takes work, the benefits in the long run are worth it. The right help can make this process easier.

Ensuring Employee Adoption

People often forget about the human side of bringing in AI. Workers might not like the changes or might not know how to work with AI.

To make sure people are on board:

Make sure leaders are all in and share the AI plan clearly
Involve employees in decisions about AI from the start
Provide training on how to work with AI
Introduce AI as a helper before making it a key part of the process
Ask for employee feedback often

With a careful approach to change, you can turn staff into fans of AI, not opponents. This requires patience but is very rewarding.

Getting past issues like privacy concerns, the challenge of mixing old and new tech, and making sure everyone is on board takes careful work but is definitely doable. Get help from people who know what they’re doing, go slowly, and talk openly–the results can be game-changing.

Conclusion

Key Takeaways

Here’s what you need to remember from this guide on making your business better with AI:

AI can take over boring tasks, find useful info in data, keep making things better over time, and give people what they want. This makes your business run smoother, saves money, and keeps customers happy.
Before you start, make sure you have good data, understand how your business works right now, and set clear goals. This prep work is really important.
Look for places where work is slow or mistakes happen a lot. These spots are perfect for bringing in AI to help.
Begin with easy stuff like entering data into computers. Then, let AI help with making smart choices. Lastly, use AI to make your whole business work better from start to finish.
You might run into problems like keeping data safe, working with old computer systems, and getting everyone used to new ways of doing things. These can be tough, but you can get through them with some expert help and a careful plan.

Towards an AI-Powered Future

The stories and tips we’ve shared show how AI can really change the way businesses work. As AI gets even better, using it won’t just be an extra advantage—it’ll be something you have to do to keep up. Business leaders should think of AI as a main part of their plan, not just something nice to have. By really going for it with AI, businesses can do their work way better, come up with new ideas, and make customers super happy. The future with AI looks like a place where businesses can do amazing things.

Last updated on April 13th, 2024.