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Business leaders across accounting, project management, asset management, and digital transformation are leveraging AI to eliminate inefficiencies, improve decision-making, and create more streamlined client experiences.
As artificial intelligence tools are becoming sophisticated, companies are moving beyond simple automation and rethinking how work gets done. Across industries, business leaders are using AI not to replace employees, but to remove operational friction, uncover hidden inefficiencies, and improve decision-making throughout entire workflows.
The change reflects a broader understanding of AI’s value. Rather than focusing solely on individual tasks, organizations are redesigning processes end-to-end, enabling teams to work more efficiently and deliver better outcomes for clients.
Removing Hidden Productivity Bottlenecks
For Andrew Whyatt-Sames, Co-Founder of uptakeAI, one of AI’s greatest strengths lies in eliminating coordination overhead that often goes unnoticed inside organizations.
“When the CEO asks a question, it sets off a chain of events. So many organizations are managed on spreadsheets. A CEO can ask a question for a piece of data that can create like three weeks of work that the CEO never learns about. But when you’ve got RAG, you can just reach into the organization and pull that data without that human overhead.”
His company uses Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to help organizations access information instantly. However, Whyatt-Sames argues that technology alone does not guarantee success.
“People really don’t want to slow down and say, what’s the actual culture work we need to do in order to get our docs in a row and our data in a row? And then overlay AI. To actually slow down to go fast is counter what the market is saying, because the market goes, it’s a silver bullet.”
Whyatt-Sames believes the human side of adoption remains the determining factor.
“When AI is in town, we study the human bit. Our take on it is it’s about 75% human, 25% technology.”
Taking a Workflow-First Approach
The emphasis on process design is echoed by Angela Hernandez, Founder of AI Accounting Agency. Rather than automating isolated tasks, her firm begins by examining entire workflows.
“People come to us and say, we want to fix this part of the process. But then we have to go back to the original automation and kind of tweak it, because there are things that are connected that we didn’t think about. So we really have to start with: what is the whole flow of your process? Break it down, and then see where we can automate the smaller things first.”
In many cases, that analysis reveals long-standing operational issues.
“The sales team forgot to remove certain items from their commission sheet, so they were getting paid for it for years without anyone really noticing. And in another case, it turned out the client was not invoicing certain customers at all. We were able to fix those procedures; they’re automated now.”
The outcome, Hernandez says, extends beyond efficiency gains.
“I think many people don’t know yet to think about the fact that they may end up being happier in their job because they get to do things that they actually want to do.”
Building Confidence Through Better Access to Information
For creative teams, workflow interruptions often stem from as simple a task as locating the right files. Ian Parkes, Chief Revenue Officer at Stockpress, says AI can help eliminate those disruptions.
“We don’t want people to have to, throughout their day, send emails that start with ‘could you just.’ I want people to be able to go, I’m going to look for this myself, with a degree of confidence that I’m actually going to be able to find it. It’s twofold: individual confidence, and collective confidence that the team’s work is preserved,” says Parkes.
Stockpress uses AI-powered features such as auto-tagging, resizing, and duplicate detection to help users find approved assets more easily.
“There are so many things that are shiny objects. But actually, when you boil it down to what people just need to be able to do that little bit better, it’s often way more dull than people want to admit. I think people think of AI as these big shiny things, when actually it’s the fundamental things that really do make a difference,” he continues.
The result is improved visibility into existing content.
“Most of the brands we work with are creating large amounts of content, but it gets buried, and when it gets buried, you narrow the field of what you’ve actually created. We’re creating more memory for you through that ability to be able to see things and search for things.”
Data Quality and Leadership Drive Results
While AI can accelerate workflows, Maxim Atanassov, Founder of Future Ventures Corp., stresses that organizations must first address their data foundations.
“The companies that are realizing the benefit of AI are the ones using AI as an enabler rather than as a substitute. If I’m a carpenter, I now have more tools in my toolbox. I can do things faster, more precisely, with higher quality. My finish is better. That’s where we’re seeing the productivity gains.”
He notes that successful transformations consistently begin with data.
“Garbage in, garbage out. To get the best output, you need the best input, which is the data. Almost all transformations start with data, and it doesn’t matter what project I’ve been on, the slowest part of any work stream in digital transformation is always the data component.”
Atanassov also highlights the importance of empowering employees while maintaining executive support.
“Anywhere that’s centralized, I have never seen it work. Everywhere where it has been grassroots with support from the top has worked phenomenally well. Give people the tools, set the guardrails, and just let them experiment.”
The Rise of Intelligent Project Management
AI is also transforming project planning. Dzmitry Dudzin, CEO of GanttPRO, says the technology is helping project managers transform unstructured information into actionable plans.
“People just grab all the information about what they want to implement, give it to us, and we try to put it all on the Gantt chart view, so they don’t spend a few hours or maybe a few days doing this. It’s also about filling gaps you don’t have in mind when you plan the project.”
Looking ahead, Dudzin expects software interfaces to become increasingly conversational.
“Our near future is one where our interfaces will be much simpler than they are today. People are waiting for the same natural experience from software as they get from talking to a person. They don’t want to input information one by one; they want the system to understand them.”
Dudzin is particularly excited by the emergence of autonomous AI agents.
“I book tennis courts automatically: my AI goes to websites, researches, and handles it for me. For GanttPRO, we use agents to check competitor news and analyze what customers say about project management. Some of those tasks I would never have done without AI. Now I can just talk to an agent and it does it all automatically.”
A Common Formula for AI Success
Currently, the companies achieving meaningful results are not treating AI as a shortcut. Instead, they are combining workflow redesign, high-quality data, cultural alignment, and leadership support to unlock its potential.
Whether reducing manual coordination, streamlining accounting processes, improving asset management, accelerating project planning, or enabling smarter decision-making, these organizations are demonstrating that AI delivers its greatest value when it serves as an enabler.
