Customer health report
High weekly effort, stable sources, one operating owner, reversible drafts. Strong first candidate: measure time-to-report and decision latency, then automate preparation with human approval.
AI opportunity selection
How to prioritize AI opportunities by revenue, margin, and capacity
Start with business pressure and a repeatable unit of work. The best first project has meaningful value, enough volume, usable data, a stable process, an accountable owner, and consequences you can control.
Short answer: score each candidate from 1–5 on business value, frequency, feasibility, data readiness, change burden, and risk. Favor high-value, high-frequency work with an owner and measurable baseline. Penalize unstable processes, inaccessible data, and high-consequence decisions even when the theoretical upside is large.
The matrix
Value determines why. Feasibility and risk determine whether now.
| Dimension | Ask | 5 looks like | 1 looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business value | Would this materially affect revenue, margin, capacity, quality, or risk? | Leadership KPI with a clear economic mechanism | Convenience with no owned outcome |
| Frequency and volume | How often does the unit repeat? | Daily, high-volume, similar cases | Rare, bespoke work |
| Process stability | Can operators describe the normal path and exceptions? | Documented, observable, bounded exceptions | Changes constantly or depends on heroics |
| Data readiness | Are required inputs accessible and trustworthy? | Structured, permissioned, representative | Missing, inaccessible, or contradictory |
| Change burden | How many roles, systems, approvals, and habits must change? | One owner, few systems, reversible rollout | Enterprise-wide behavior change |
| Risk and judgment | What happens when the system is wrong? | Low consequence, easy review and reversal | Material legal, financial, safety, or customer harm |
Do not simply add the six scores. Business value and frequency increase priority. Change burden and risk should be subtracted or treated as gates. A high-value workflow with no owner, no baseline, or uncontrolled consequences is an audit candidate—not an autonomous implementation candidate.
Worked example
Three plausible projects; one better first move.
Contract negotiation
High value but low frequency and high judgment. Use AI for research and clause comparison, not autonomous decisions. Keep legal approval explicit.
Company-wide knowledge bot
Broad appeal but vague owner, permissions, success metric, and source quality. Narrow it to one decision and one audience before funding a build.
Sequence
A practical first-week decision process
1. List workflows, not tools
Name the unit of work, owner, volume, handoffs, and failure cost. “Use an agent” is not an opportunity definition.
2. Quantify the current state
Measure touch time, wait time, rework, loaded cost, quality, and downstream capacity or revenue effect.
3. Fund a bounded proof
Pick one baseline, one owner, one review window, one human-control policy, and one stop rule.