Lately, almost every company is competing to add AI features to their products or implementing AI in their business flows. It's as if without AI, an application or business would be outdated. Yet in many cases, AI is not the most pressing problem to solve. As an IT practitioner and software house owner, you can be sure that I am not anti-AI. In fact, I think that AI will be unstoppable, and that eventually we will all have to adapt to a world filled with AI. But for business matters, before thinking about AI, there are more important questions to answer. Does your business process have a good SOP? After having a good SOP, are your business processes properly digitalized? If these two things have not been resolved, then it is very likely that the AI ??you currently think of will not be of much help. In this article we will discuss when AI can really help your business, when AI is not needed, and what steps should be prioritized before starting to integrate AI into business processes.
What is AI?
When we talk about AI these days, what comes to mind are products like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. The product is a type of AI known as LLM or Large Language Model. But sometimes, some people who don't delve much into the world of IT sometimes think AI is a magical tool that can answer all our questions and solve the problems we face. In fact, in the context of business operations, AI is a system that is trained using large sets of data to recognize patterns, predict results, or automate certain tasks. AI can seem very smart and fast, but it is still a machine that requires clear instructions and a structured work environment. style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">To understand how AI can be utilized properly, we need to distinguish several types of AI implementations that are commonly used in the world business. The first is Generative AI, like the LLM we discussed earlier. This type of AI is amazing at creating new content, summarizing long documents, replying to emails, or even writing program code. The second is Predictive AI, which focuses on analyzing mountains of historical data to forecast future trends. Examples include predicting a spike in product demand next month, optimizing logistics routes, or detecting fraudulent anomalies in financial transactions. Lastly is intelligent automation capabilities, where AI is used to take over repetitive structured tasks. This can include automated invoice processing, sorting and routing customer support tickets, to synchronizing data between applications without human intervention. Understanding this difference is important so that you don't choose the wrong "tool" for the "problem" at hand.
AI Will Not Help You In This Situation
Many business owners fall into the trap of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and force the use of AI on the foundation fragile business. You need to realize that AI will not save your business if your business processes are still messy and you don't have neat data. You need to understand that AI cannot fix bad management. If your team's workflow is still a mess, using AI won't fix it instantly. Instead, you introduce new risks that could come from using AI.
AI needs "food" in the form of data. If stock records, customer data, or financial reports are still scattered across piles of paper, non-standardized Excel files, or simply the memory of your division head, AI won't be able to help you. Apart from that, it also needs to be understood that in some fields, interaction with humans cannot be replaced. Handling complaints from priority clients (VIPs) or conducting high-level business negotiations are areas where emotional nuance and human empathy cannot yet be replaced by any intelligent bot. It could be that customers choose your product or service because of the human touch. Don't let it replace the main selling point of your business because you apply AI to your business.
Before AI Make Sure You Have Implemented This
As a software house, we often receive requests, "Now that AI is trending, what is Can it be implemented into my application or business?" Before I can answer, usually I will ask the following things:
Does your company have a clear and tested SOP? Create standard operating procedures for each division. Who does what, when, and how the approval flows. The business must be able to run smoothly manually or conventionally first. If everything is running smoothly manually, the next question is have you started digitizing your business processes? Before thinking about AI, have you started using a POS (Point of Sales) or ERP (Enterprise Resource Planner) system and other supporting applications? AI lives in a digital world, if your work environment has not yet digitized, then the process of implementing AI will be much more difficult.
The digitization process and use of various applications also need to be ensured that they are running well. Ensure all data entered into the system is accurate and timely. It's no use having a digital system if your employees are lazy about inputting accurate data. Make sure the entire team is disciplined in using the existing system. The quality of AI output is highly dependent on the quality of the data you have (Garbage in, Garbage out). The more data you have, the better the applied AI performance will be. Don't expect AI to be able to provide the right advice for your business if the sales data you have only goes back one month. style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Interestingly, while full-scale AI implementation requires a strong foundation, AI tools You can actually use the generative tools that currently exist to help speed up the preparation process. If you don't have an SOP yet, you can use AI as an assistant to draft a standard procedures document from the random points you provide. AI can also be used by your IT team to write formulas or scripts to clean and tidy up piles of old, non-standardized data. So, instead of jumping straight into building a complex business AI system, utilize AI as a practical, everyday tool to take care of your internal “homework” first. style="font-size:13.999999999999998pt;font-family:'Nunito Sans',sans-serif;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">Things to Note When Using AI
If your business foundation is mature enough and ready to integrate AI into your workflow, there are several aspects fundamentals that must be the main consideration. The first and most crucial aspect is the security and privacy of your company and customer data. When connecting internal systems with third-party AI services, ensure that no confidential data or sensitive information is exposed without protection, encryption, and compliance with applicable privacy regulations.
Apart from the safety factor, you are also required to calculate cost components realistically. Developing, training, and maintaining AI infrastructure specifically for a company's specific needs often requires a large investment, so it is important to ensure that the costs are commensurate with the efficiency or benefits that will be gained. It also needs to be understood that the sophistication of this technology does not necessarily negate the role of humans behind it. You should always employ ongoing human supervision. Position AI as a copilot that speeds up the process, while full control and final validation of strategic decisions remains in human hands.
