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From streamlining operations and accelerating product development to recovering lost profits and strengthening governance, business leaders are deploying AI where it delivers measurable results.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how businesses operate, but industry leaders believe that success is not determined by who adopts the newest tool first. Instead, the companies achieving meaningful results are those that build structured systems, document processes, and deploy AI to create measurable business impact.
Understanding the Power of AI
Across industries, AI is serving as an amplifier of human capability rather than replacing employees. AI automates repetitive tasks, surfaces critical information, and enables teams to focus on strategic work.
For Malcolm Bell, co-founder of BB9, effective AI implementation begins long before software is deployed. His firm works with businesses to identify operational inefficiencies and build systems that improve execution.
Bell’s approach suggests that the first step to effective AI is not buying the best tool but auditing workflows. He argues that businesses must first understand how work gets done before expecting AI to improve outcomes.
“Before any systems are added to a business, the decision makers have to meet with the doers to audit their process in a really, really deep way to build standard operating procedures and playbooks that codify that role,” Bell said.
Once those systems are established, AI can perform complex workflows without interruption. “Nobody can walk into the AI’s office and distract it. If you set up a certain task, if you set up a certain workflow based on certain triggers — like time of day or some kind of input trigger — it can run extremely complex tasks without ever being interrupted,” he stated.
That philosophy has also influenced BB9’s approach to sales automation.
“We found that it was 51 days that a person would take in order to make an actual buying decision. And so we reoriented all of the follow-ups around not this front-loaded harass them for the first six days of their car buying experience, but to actually not really harass them at all,” Bell explained.
Turning Ideas Into Products Faster
While BB9 focuses on process optimization, Platesfull has used AI to transform product development.
Sharon Kuriakose, co-founder of the personal-chef marketplace Platesfull, faced a common startup challenge: limited technical resources. AI development tools dramatically changed that equation.
“I was at 100x speed. I used to take like eight weeks to roll out something. Now it takes a few hours. The same thing if I had to get it done by a technology team — that’s like $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 depending on the complexity. Now I need to spend $60,” Kuriakose said.
Beyond development, AI has become a critical operational tool for the company.
“Every response that goes from a chef on Platesfull gets a score. It has to be at least 60 out of 100. Every week, a report goes to the chef saying, ” This is what you did, you did great on these five points, and these two points can be areas of improvement,” she shared.
The shift reflects a broader change in AI-enabled entrepreneurship.
“Two years back, someone who could think but could not build had to rely on someone who could build. Someone who could build but could not think had to rely on someone who could think. Now you just have to think and you can get it built,” Kuriakose added.
Finding Hidden Profit Opportunities
For Abraham Chera, founder and principal consultant at Syboost, AI’s value lies in helping businesses uncover inefficiencies that often go unnoticed.
“Growth is sort of the easier method. Before you would go into trying to figure out what’s broken, you kind of just want to keep that wheel going. It reinforces the same thing again — instead of taking a look back at the systems that you had in place that might have aged and are not able to keep up,” Chera said.
His firm uses AI-driven market intelligence to identify opportunities for immediate savings.
“Vendors are probably charging you a premium. Let’s just say you have a big store — you can see how much other buildings in the area are charging and say, “I’m paying $15 a square foot; I want to pay $12 a square foot.” Those are simple one-off phone calls that could save you anywhere between $15,000 to $30,000,” he noted.
AI is also changing how businesses generate leads.
“When someone types in ‘my business is not doing as well as it was two years ago,’ the system asks a whole bunch of questions to figure out why, and then it delivers an ad specifically for that solution. That is a more organic way of finding a lead — and I see conversions being significantly higher,” Chera explained.
Building the Foundation for AI
Damon Flowers, CEO of Modern Operators, believes many organizations make a critical mistake by layering AI onto inefficient systems.
“AI is now an accelerator to what’s already happening. And if you have a broken environment, it just accelerates bottlenecks, problems, challenges even faster,” Flowers said.
To address that issue, his firm helps businesses create a centralized operational framework.
“What we like to say is that modern operations is the new engine. That operational core is where your AI needs to live — it serves the company best by having context and organization and understanding what the company does, driving alignment for your staff and for your AI,” he explained.
With the right foundation, AI can contribute across an organization.
“Now AI can work at all levels in the business, from a chief of staff or director-level role, all the way down to a specialist writing PR copy or doing sales call analysis. It’s able to do it because it has context — it knows where we’re going, what we’re focused on, and who we serve,” Flowers added.
Scaling Responsibly
As adoption accelerates, governance remains a growing concern. Lawrence Patrizio, CRO of NeuralSeek, has seen the risks that emerge when AI systems operate without adequate oversight.
“With NeuralSeek governing your AI, I can go back in my logs and see the LLM said this answer because it didn’t have the full picture of the data. We like to always maintain our alliance to the truth, which is the data going into the LLM,” Patrizio said.
He believes many small and mid-sized businesses approach AI with the wrong objective.
“They’re looking to adopt AI to cost cut. You should look to adopt AI to bloat and make yourself bigger and stronger and more intimidating. You can offer the same service at a lower cost because you don’t have the headcount that your larger competitors have inherited,” he shared.
At the same time, Patrizio cautions against pursuing AI simply because it is trending.
“Don’t get drawn into the flashiness of all the headlines. Anchor on the ground principles. Be like, what problem am I trying to solve? What time-saving am I trying to attain? That will help you avoid a lot of the edge cases that a product like mine was built from,” Patrizio added.
The Future of AI in Business Operations
Whether the goal is to recover lost profits, accelerate product development, improve operational consistency, or govern AI systems at scale, the most successful implementations enhance human decision-making rather than replace it. For businesses seeking smarter ways to work, AI delivers the greatest value when supported by strong processes, clear objectives, and the guardrails needed to turn capability into measurable results.
