The Boring Stuff Is What Usually Matters
Hi all 👋
No story from me again this week. I'm still off enjoying some time away, more sun than screens for me these days. But I had these two pieces I wanted to share. They paired up better than I expected: one's on why AI pilots stall before they ever launch, the other's a case study where success looks like nobody noticing anything happened.
Let's get into it.
What's Happening in AI
There's a stat going around: 41% of stalled AI pilots get blocked by data and infrastructure problems.
Most vendors love that stat. It's the problem they can sell you a fix for. But there's another number that matters more for you: companies that lock in an executive sponsor before the pilot starts are more than twice as likely to actually reach production.
The bigger question is about ownership, not readiness. We've seen a validated proof of concept, technically ready to go, sit stalled for months because the executive who owned it moved roles. That's not a technology problem, it's an organizational one, and it's the part you actually control.
So skip "is this pilot ready" and ask a better question: who, senior enough to make things happen, owns getting it live? If you can't name that person right now, that's probably where yours stalls too.
This Week's Case Study
Every business has some version of this: a small error that's cheap to fix quietly, expensive once a customer sees it. One hotel operator had staff checking room rates against bookings by hand, three days out, until we automated it with a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) bot instead.
- Rate discrepancies at check-in dropped by about 90%
- Every booking got checked, not just the ones someone remembers
- Front desk spent time on guests, not rate checks
Worth asking: is there a step in your business where a small mistake, caught quietly today, turns into a visible one tomorrow? That's usually the one worth fixing first.
→ Read the full case study.
A Useful Resource
One question I get quite often is: "How do I know if a process is actually worth automating?"
That's why we built the Administrative Tax Calculator. It shows you how much you're paying premium salaries to do low-value work, chasing updates, manual entry, bridging gaps between systems. Before you hire another person, see how much you're already losing to broken processes.
That's it for this week.
— Robbie
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Hi all 👋
No story from me again this week. I'm still off enjoying some time away, more sun than screens for me these days. But I had these two pieces I wanted to share. They paired up better than I expected: one's on why AI pilots stall before they ever launch, the other's a case study where success looks like nobody noticing anything happened.
Let's get into it.
What's Happening in AI
There's a stat going around: 41% of stalled AI pilots get blocked by data and infrastructure problems.
Most vendors love that stat. It's the problem they can sell you a fix for. But there's another number that matters more for you: companies that lock in an executive sponsor before the pilot starts are more than twice as likely to actually reach production.
The bigger question is about ownership, not readiness. We've seen a validated proof of concept, technically ready to go, sit stalled for months because the executive who owned it moved roles. That's not a technology problem, it's an organizational one, and it's the part you actually control.
So skip "is this pilot ready" and ask a better question: who, senior enough to make things happen, owns getting it live? If you can't name that person right now, that's probably where yours stalls too.
This Week's Case Study
Every business has some version of this: a small error that's cheap to fix quietly, expensive once a customer sees it. One hotel operator had staff checking room rates against bookings by hand, three days out, until we automated it with a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) bot instead.
- Rate discrepancies at check-in dropped by about 90%
- Every booking got checked, not just the ones someone remembers
- Front desk spent time on guests, not rate checks
Worth asking: is there a step in your business where a small mistake, caught quietly today, turns into a visible one tomorrow? That's usually the one worth fixing first.
→ Read the full case study.
A Useful Resource
One question I get quite often is: "How do I know if a process is actually worth automating?"
That's why we built the Administrative Tax Calculator. It shows you how much you're paying premium salaries to do low-value work, chasing updates, manual entry, bridging gaps between systems. Before you hire another person, see how much you're already losing to broken processes.
That's it for this week.
— Robbie
