Every department has a pile of work nobody enjoys. This is what happens to it when AI takes over.
No abstract promises. Per department the same working day twice: how it runs now, and how it runs once the boring work is automated. With the software that is usually already running, the places where it really pays off, and the objections you come across online. Including our honest answer to them.
// The companies in these reports are fictional. The situations are not: we run into them again and again in practice.
Administration & finance
A quarter of all invoices are paid late. And your admin team only sees it once it’s too late.
- Friday afternoon: the pile of PDF purchase invoices from the mailbox is retyped by hand into the accounting package.
- Sales invoices go out as PDFs, without a payment link. Paying is a chore for the customer.
- Nobody looks at the debtors list weekly; the reminder only goes out when the money is really needed.
Sales & quotes
A salesperson spends 28% of their week selling. The rest is typing, searching and “I’ll get back to you”.
- The web enquiry from Friday afternoon gets called on Monday. Or Tuesday.
- The quote sits for three days because only the rep on the road knows the prices.
- The CRM gets updated “later”: notes live in heads, on post-its and in WhatsApp.
Purchasing & stock
Too much on the shelf is dead money. Too little is a “no” to a customer who had already walked in.
- Reordering is done on gut feeling: the buyer walks past the shelves and orders whatever looks “nearly out”.
- The bestseller has just sold out; the customer orders it online somewhere else and does not come back.
- In the warehouse sits a pallet that was already there last year. Nobody dares to write it off.
Production & workshop
Two in three business owners are looking for staff. In the workshop that means: the same work with fewer hands.
- The schedule hangs on a whiteboard; whoever works from home or is out on the floor cannot see it.
- Job sheets are paper: hours get retyped in the evening, or not at all.
- The machinist is looking for the latest version of the drawing; there are three lying around, and one is wrong.
Construction & installation
68% of technical companies are looking for engineers. The work is there; the hands are not.
- Preparing a quote takes hours: materials lists, estimating hours, recalculating margins in an old Excel sheet.
- On site, the crew is working from a drawing that was not quite the latest revision; part of it has to be redone.
- Hours and materials are kept on scraps of paper and booked days later — or not at all.
Field service & maintenance
Two trips for the same fault. You never earn the second trip back.
- The engineer gets a list of addresses in the morning, but not the customer’s fault history.
- On site, it turns out the right part is not in the van; a new appointment is needed.
- Job sheets are on paper; typed up at home or in the office in the evening, or lost.
Transport planning & administration
6,800 drivers short. The trips still have to run, with fewer people behind the wheel.
- Route planning is a puzzle on a map and in the head of one planner; if he is off sick, the company grinds to a halt.
- Lorries drive back half empty; return loads are not found, or found too late.
- Consignment notes are paper; the signed copy goes missing, and the invoice waits for it.
Marketing & content
95% of marketers use AI. 39% see something come of it. The difference is who presses “publish”.
- The newsletter has been “almost done” for two months. The last one went out in March.
- The latest news item on the website is from 2023.
- Everyone posts on LinkedIn themselves; tone and house style differ from person to person.
Customer service & communication
“Where’s my order?” Twenty times a day. Your team can do better, if the machine does the boring part.
- “Where’s my order?” makes up a quarter to half of all questions.
- Customer emails wait for hours, sometimes a day; the weekend doesn’t count.
- The phone rings during lunch or a customer visit and nobody picks up.
HR & recruitment
Forty CVs in the inbox and nobody with time to read them. Candidates hear nothing for two weeks, and go to the competitor next door.
- Forty CVs in the owner’s inbox; candidates hear nothing for two weeks.
- The 2019 vacancy text with “young, dynamic colleague”. Indirect age discrimination, and nobody notices.
- Six emails and three chat messages to find one interview slot.
Planning, scheduling & events
Knowledge workers are interrupted every two minutes. The roster gets fixed on WhatsApp on Sunday evening. There is a smarter way.
- The roster gets fixed on WhatsApp every Sunday evening; swap requests in private chats.
- “Just a quick meeting with five people”: one in four employees loses three to four hours a week to it.
- More than half of all meetings are ad hoc, without an invitation or a purpose.
IT, security & data
The same password for everything, a fake invoice “from the director” and a former colleague who can still log in. This is not a film. This is Tuesday.
- The same password for everything, written down in a shared Excel sheet.
- No two-factor authentication on the director’s mailbox, “because it is a hassle”.
- The fake invoice email “from the director” with a changed bank account number that was almost paid.
Management & leadership
The monthly figures arrive on the 20th. The decision was taken on the 5th. On gut feeling.
- The monthly figures only arrive on the 20th, when the decision has already been taken.
- Three versions of the truth: the sales Excel sheet, the accounts, and the gut feeling.
- The dashboard that was built once and never updated again.
Is your department not listed?
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