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The FinOps Advisor Blog.

Do NOT buy AI software! (Yet.)

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The recent release and very much hyped launch of ChatGPT is making everyone AI crazy. Now, I am a huge fan of technology, especially AI and automation technology, but I think that it’s best to prioritize AI, and especially ChatGPT, appropriately in your business life. And for that I mean utilize your existing, built-in back-office automation first, then buy an automation platform, then buy an AI platform.

AI is hot.

A quick scan of my email inbox and LinkedIn headlines shows about twenty AI-related messages – and it’s not even noon! Here are a few examples:

Or is it?

But for every “ChatGPT will change the world!” message, I saw at least one that said “Danger, Will Robinson!”

And, of course, the big one:

So in the space of just a few minutes AI and its golden child ChatGPT went from being a hero to being a zero. Or at least yesterday’s news. Or did it? There’s lots of mixed messages out there.

Who’s right? Who’s wrong? What’s the right thing to do?

My advice: Wait. Get the rest of your house, like back-office automation, integration, etc., in order first. Then do AI. By that time things will be more sorted out and you will be able to implement a more mature AI platform. And you’ll have enough knowledge to just say no to ‘AI washing’ and other overhyped (and questionably effective) technologies.

An Example of AI/RPA Overkill

I remember reading a robotic process automation (RPA) vendor’s post not too long ago that suggested that companies’ needed to use their RPA platform to automate moving sales data from Salesforce into NetSuite. With the claim that “Bots will automate sales quote data movement from Salesforce into the sales order of NetSuite.”

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Here’s the graphic that they posted to show the data transfer workflow enabled with a bot.

Well, guess what, if you know NetSuite well, as I do, you know that you don’t need an expensive automation platform + RPA developers + ongoing bot maintenance, etc., to do this automation. The simple fix is an API, like Celigo, and voila, data movement from SF.com into NetSuite is now automated. No more swivel chair computing! Improved accuracy, happier employees, and the list goes on.

The trouble is not everyone knows these little tricks. They don’t know the scores of built-in automations that are free or at very little cost. So they can be swayed by the blue sky promises that some vendors are pushing. That’s where you hire a subject matter expert, or SME, to uncover ALL of NetSuite’s potential first – and then do automation and AI and other cool technologies. It’s a lot easier and cheaper that way.

Have we seen this all before?

Maybe.

Remember: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana.

In his excellent book, the “New New Thing,” author Michael Lewis describes how the Internet came to fruition, but not without a number of false starts. One idea specifically, that of Internet set-top boxes creating a herd mentality that drove very smart businesses down a wrong path only to be “faked out” by an eccentric billionaire named Jim Clark and his young protégé Marc Andreessen as they co-created the Netscape Internet browser.

“You have to sit down and think for a bit to realize what that means, not just for Clark but for anyone with the slightest interest in how economies and societies are nudged from one place to the next. A company dreamed up by a technical man a lot of big shots thought was slightly unhinged, with a twenty-two-year-old who didn’t want to do it in the first place, and another twenty-two-year-old assigned to sleep under his bed, did not become merely a success. It torpedoed investments of hundreds of millions by the world’s biggest corporations and putatively smartest minds—SGI, TW, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, AT&T. Thousands of people had more or less wasted billions of dollars and, whether they knew it or not, had been following his lead. Then, just as they all ran as a herd in one direction, he took off in another. And within six months Clark made them all look like fools. It was one of the great unintentional head fakes in the history of technology.[i]”

Lewis, Michael. The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (pp. 82-83). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Will history repeat itself? Will ChatGPT be the new new thing that fakes us all out again?

Look, I’m not in any way suggesting that you not look into AI, ChatGPT, or any other leading technology. In fact quite the opposite: please do study these technologies for the long-term; put them on your technology roadmaps as potential must-haves.

However for the short-term, I am suggesting that you utilize all of your existing automation and AI before delving into a dedicated automation or AI development platform.

The Bottom Line

In my opinion, don’t go running off buying all this AI/ChatGPT – or even RPA – stuff until you have fully utilized what you already have. Your back-office systems probably don’t need it. At least not yet. I’m betting that you have a ton of now-manual process opportunities that don’t require AI or RPA, but which will have massive ROI if automated.

The Golden Rule: Utilize ALL built-in automation FIRST, and then look to RPA or other automation platforms, and then do AI. But make sure you’ve fully utilized and optimized your existing systems and processes first!

Pro Tip: Here’s a quick list of things that you can do very easily to help you run your business better 18 Ways to Automate Your Business for Growth.

If you’d like to talk more, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or at klain@kranz.consulting. I’d be happy to help. Or, make a comment below; I’d love to hear your thoughts.

All my best,

Kim

[i] Lewis, Michael. The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (pp. 82-83). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
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