And so many organisations are getting started. They try out a tool, run a pilot, build a smart assistant. It looks brilliant in a demo. But after that, not much usually happens. The assistant gives answers that aren't quite right. The agent stumbles over exceptions. And after a few months, the experiment grinds to a halt, without anyone being able to say exactly why.
I know why. And I say this with twenty years' experience in finance and as the founder of CBEE Remarkable. All too often, I see organisations launching AI with enthusiasm, but without the data foundations, process discipline or system integration needed to make it a success. AI is not a magic bullet that you can simply apply to anything. True AI adoption is not an IT project. It is a business transformation. And that doesn't start with the technology. It starts with what's already there.
No smart AI without a foundation
Take a European company with over two hundred employees that helps clients in dozens of countries work smarter. CBEE Remarkable makes sure the systems and data add up. Every hour counts for a company like this. Who works where, at what rate, with what margin, it all has to be spot on. AI assistants can make exactly that work easier. An assistant that helps estimate what a project will cost. An assistant that helps decide who is best suited to a job. And assistants like that work, day in, day out.
But when someone at a company like this told me the real reason behind that kind of success, the answer was not about the AI. It was about all the years leading up to it. It was about the painstaking work of getting the data right and bringing it all together in one place. The AI was the visible part. The real work lay beneath it.
'With Certinia on the Salesforce platform, you have the opportunity to create one single hub for all your data. Whether it's marketing qualified leads, the sales pipeline, resource utilization, billable hours or project margins, your team can access all their business dashboards with a single click.'
Three things that need to be in place
If I boil it down to the essentials, useful AI rests on three things. And if just one is missing, it remains nothing more than an experiment that never really delivers anything.
The first is accurate data. The facts on which AI is based. Figures, customers, projects, invoices, all up to date and in one place, rather than scattered across separate files and systems that don't communicate with one another.
The second is context. Because facts alone don't make AI smart. AI also needs to understand how your organisation works. Why a particular customer is a sensitive one, how you structure a quotation, what the behind-the-scenes agreements are. That's the difference between a general answer and the right answer.
The third is trust. You'll only truly let AI take over your work when you can rely on it. When you know it stays within the rules, handles your data properly and does what you expect. Without that trust, nobody dares to take the step from a trial run to real-world application.
Data, context and trust. Once you've got those three sorted, AI suddenly becomes something you can really rely on. Not a gimmick, but a colleague who takes the workload off your hands.
This is just the start
This is exactly the work CBEE Remarkable does every day. Organising your information so that you can truly rely on it. We do this on Salesforce, the world's most widely used system for bringing together customer and business data. Many organisations stop as soon as the technology is in place. That's where it really begins. Because buttons alone are of no use to you. What's useful is understanding what your figures mean and how you can use them to work smarter.
On 9 and 10 September, we'll be at Data Expo at the Jaarbeurs Utrecht. It's the perfect opportunity where business, data and technology come together to take the step from experimentation to measurable results. That's exactly what this story is all about. Whether you're primarily focused on the returns or are working with the data and technology yourself, do pop by if you're curious to find out how far your organisation has come and what becomes possible once the foundations are in place. I'd be happy to chat to you about it.
This blog post is a contribution from CBEE Remarkable, an implementation partner specialized in Salesforce and Certinia. CBEE helps organizations in professional services, IT, and Health & Life Sciences digitize and connect their commercial and financial processes, from lead to cash. Find more inspiration at www.cbeeremarkable.nl or visit CBEE Remarkable during Data Expo.
Author: Chris Boonstra
