Looking Back on June
Hi all 👋
June was an interesting month. Not surprising, but interesting.
Across a mix of client work, industry conversations, and AI developments, it emerged that most organizations aren't really constrained by technology. They are, however, constrained by operational design — the way work flows through.
Whether we were talking about AI, automation, reporting, freight processing, or claims management, technology was rarely the bottleneck.
Case Studies
Talking about operational design, here are a few case studies of organizations reaping benefits of streamlined workflows.
FREIGHT & LOGISTICS OPERATIONS
A retail operations team reduced manual freight processing time by ~75% after automating freight sourcing, fulfilment workflows, and inventory transfers.
ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE PROCESSING
A finance team recovered 15–20 hours per week by redesigning the process for extracting and validating remittance advice information.
What Caught My Attention in AI
AI WASHING
As AI adoption grows, so does the challenge of separating real business value from marketing.
The evaluation criteria still seem pretty simple:
- Does it improve productivity?
- Does it reduce operational friction?
- Does it improve decision-making?
- Can it actually be adopted by the business?
AI IMPLEMENTATION
One Gartner report suggested many organizations are seeing workforce reductions through AI, but not necessarily stronger returns. The organizations generating the most value seem to be investing just as heavily in governance, operating models, and execution as they are in the technology itself.
In Case You Missed It
This month, I shared a few thoughts on:
- Why shortcuts might help a business grow, but rarely help it last
- Why AI won't just replace roles, it will redesign them
- Why AI pilots often struggle when it's time to scale across the business
- Why operational clarity beats optimism
That's it for this month.
— Robbie
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Hi all 👋
June was an interesting month. Not surprising, but interesting.
Across a mix of client work, industry conversations, and AI developments, it emerged that most organizations aren't really constrained by technology. They are, however, constrained by operational design — the way work flows through.
Whether we were talking about AI, automation, reporting, freight processing, or claims management, technology was rarely the bottleneck.
Case Studies
Talking about operational design, here are a few case studies of organizations reaping benefits of streamlined workflows.
FREIGHT & LOGISTICS OPERATIONS
A retail operations team reduced manual freight processing time by ~75% after automating freight sourcing, fulfilment workflows, and inventory transfers.
ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE PROCESSING
A finance team recovered 15–20 hours per week by redesigning the process for extracting and validating remittance advice information.
What Caught My Attention in AI
AI WASHING
As AI adoption grows, so does the challenge of separating real business value from marketing.
The evaluation criteria still seem pretty simple:
- Does it improve productivity?
- Does it reduce operational friction?
- Does it improve decision-making?
- Can it actually be adopted by the business?
AI IMPLEMENTATION
One Gartner report suggested many organizations are seeing workforce reductions through AI, but not necessarily stronger returns. The organizations generating the most value seem to be investing just as heavily in governance, operating models, and execution as they are in the technology itself.
In Case You Missed It
This month, I shared a few thoughts on:
- Why shortcuts might help a business grow, but rarely help it last
- Why AI won't just replace roles, it will redesign them
- Why AI pilots often struggle when it's time to scale across the business
- Why operational clarity beats optimism
That's it for this month.
— Robbie
