Deploying AI where it adds value? It's all about the what, the how, and the why.

Which of the three

There are thousands of places within an organisation where you can deploy AI. A smart tool to connect systems, automated processes, or perhaps an AI chatbot containing all your company's knowledge? It's all possible. But which one actually delivers the most value?

The right path to the gold differs per organisation. The right choice for your business? You make it by choosing one of three starting points: the integration route (the what), the automation route (the how), or the knowledge route (the why).

The integration route: the what

Imagine: you have a holding company with twelve business units. Or an HR group with an occupational health service, absenteeism guidance, and coaching — all islands with their own data. And now you want a digital occupational health employee who can access all those islands. Most companies build point solutions for HR, finance, and sales — and in doing so, create yet another landscape of disconnected systems.

The right way to do it? Lay the right infrastructure to get all those islands talking to each other.

With an integration platform like Workato, you build the right foundation. Think of it as a kind of enterprise power strip through which MCP protocols will soon flow. So that when the market gets flooded with smart agents — and it will — you can plug them straight into your own landscape.

This route is like the underground piping in a new-build home. Not sexy and immediately impactful, I know. But without that piping, all you have is a nice prefab tiny house, instead of a real home for yourself and the next generation.

The automation route: the how

The second route is process automation. Because at its core, every business is nothing more than a set of business processes being executed — where the human factor is often what slows things down.

One of our clients, a fresh produce company, faced exactly this. Their daily fresh products arrive in the morning and need to be sold by evening. When a new customer calls wanting to buy €15,000 worth of products, the manual routine kicks in. Finance needs to run a credit check and the customer has to be entered into the system by hand. Every step in that process causes delay, and all it takes is one missed email from one employee for the deal to fall through and the products to go unsold.

With Camunda or UiPath, you inject AI precisely at those strategic points. Credit check? With AI, it happens automatically. Unclear email from a customer? AI translates it into structured data and people are freed up for orchestration.

This isn't "deploying AI randomly because you can" — it's analysing where your chain is creaking and cracking, and building intelligence in exactly those spots. This is the how route.

The knowledge route: the why

Route three is, in most cases, also the biggest project. There is tremendous value locked away in information systems — but far, far more in the heads of your employees.

At one of our clients, there was a senior buyer who had developed a clever purchasing trick. Nobody bought the unripe mangoes, because they'd sit too long before they could be sold. But when he spotted a delay at a lock somewhere along the route, he'd buy them up — because he knew the competition wasn't paying attention and in three days they'd all be left empty-handed. He got a great deal. And the mangoes. These kinds of smart insights are worth their weight in gold to organisations.

That's why this knowledge route is so incredibly powerful. With Glean or knowledge graphs, you build a context layer that connects relationships, decision-making, and the why. Layer RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) on top of your own content, so AI doesn't just produce generic nonsense, but answers that actually hold up within your organisational context.

This is the difference between a basic process manual and understanding why it was set up that way in the first place. Whoever has that in order is in the race to get the full value out of AI.

Which route(s) will you choose?

And the great thing is, these routes don't exclude each other. Companies that truly want to make an impact with AI within their organisation walk the what, the how, and the why simultaneously.

A significant undertaking — but also one with unprecedented opportunities. Though to be fair: for many companies, just one of these routes is enough to leave the competition behind. So before you start thinking about tools, software, and cool technology: ask yourself where you actually need AI.

And want to know what you should do? Or stuck on how to go about it? Send me a message. Why not? 😉

Want to read ahead about the best AI options for your situation? Or discover how to become AI-ready? Learn more.