Optimizing Internal Processes with Custom AI Assistants

If a process is long and complex, it negatively impacts both the business and its customers. By optimizing processes, organizations can work more effectively: speed up information analysis, automate repetitive tasks, and quickly transfer knowledge.

Process optimization involves using various tools to create smoother workflows. One of them are custom AI assistants (known also as AI copilots). In this article, I'll guide you through the topic of these assistants: their types, numerous benefits, and some challenges that come with it.

Understanding process optimization

But what exactly does process optimization mean, and why is it so important? Process improvement involves identifying and addressing inefficiencies to improve existing processes and enhance overall business performance.

It impacts many areas of a business. By increasing productivity, it helps minimize costs and better manage human resources. Additionally, process optimization ensures a seamless user experience and maintains high customer satisfaction.

Artificial intelligence solutions has changed how we execute processes, especially for repetitive tasks. Now, generative AI can automate complex, context-heavy processes like expert advice, document verification, and customer support.

Optimizing processes with AI integration

AI added an extra dimension to process optimization. Nowadays, it’s used across various industries including automotive industry, logistics and deliveries, through the beauty industry. It efficiently assists with tasks such as: streamlining the supply chain (through functions such as accurate forecasting), streamlining last-mile delivery routes (for instance, AI models can determine the best delivery routes), or managing inventory (where algorithms and data analytics can improve e.g. inventory replacement planning).

An example from our organization illustrating how AI improves internal processes can be Netguru Memory. With data from over 9,000 projects, we developed this AI powered assistant to store, organize, and share data, answering our questions quickly. Before Memory, we spent a lot of time gathering and sifting through information. Now, Memory provides project descriptions and answers queries in under a minute. It also offers recommendations, improves decision-making, and streamlines workflows. Cool, right?

Moreover, our client’s records show that AI can drastically speed up processes. Operations that used to take 15 months now take 5 days, 8 hours reduced to 40 seconds, and 40 minutes cut to 5 minutes. Curious how we do it? I’ll share some case studies and detailed numbers later in the article.

What are custom AI Assistants and how can they elevate process optimization?

AI assistants are digital tools designed to perform various tasks for companies or their users based on a given command. They can be either custom made or utilize open-source frameworks.

A custom AI assistant is a personalized program or an app developed and tailored to perform specific tasks and/or provide information only for a particular company or its users. An open-source AI assistant has source code available for anyone to access and modify. This allows for its integration into your products without proprietary restrictions.

Let’s look at some key differences between custom AI and open AI assistants:

What's the role of a custom digital assistant in the streamlining process? Most importantly, these AI tools can operate 24/7, handling repetitive jobs so humans can focus on more creative or important work. This includes automating some tasks or analyzing vast amounts of information within minutes to provide valuable insights. By using a specified set of data, an assistant also helps to identify inefficiencies and reduce errors. As a result, the job gets done quicker, with less resources required.

Custom AI assistants in practice: case studies

Merck

Key problem for this multinational science and technology company was the manual identification of key chemical compounds. Other challenges included understanding reports, answering sponsors' questions, and conducting due diligence. This entire process took over 6 months to complete.

Our team's main goal was to shorten this time. To make this happen we decided to implement an AI R&D Assistant. The tool handles tasks such as analyzing and identifying chemicals in articles and assigning official names and unique codes. It also retrieves additional chemical properties and checks the company's internal catalog for sold chemicals. Our data engineers cut down initial processing time by 720 times, reducing it from 6 months to approx. 6 hours.

Newglobe

Newglobe is a US-based education company operating in underserved communities in Africa and Asia. They wanted to streamline the creation of teacher’s manuals, as often then it took over 15 months to create one. Main challenges included multiple customized syllabuses, aligned with local curricula, quality control, and delayed go-to-market timelines.

We aimed to reduce the creation time, while ensuring high-quality educational content aligned with local standards. To do so, Netguru developed a Python-based GenAI system that uses predefined templates to automate the creation of teacher guides. Now the system generates full lesson scripts ensuring flexibility to adapt documents to local country specifics, subject types, and languages. This significantly improved Newglobe’s workflow, cutting production time from 15 months to just 5 days.

Legal Advisory Firm

This company, specializing in tax consultancy and corporate restructuring, was looking for a way to improve efficiency of their few current processes. The company handles enormous volumes of complex and critical documentation daily. They have to be on top of constantly updated government databases, court decisions, and other legal sources as well.

Our goal was to automate legal document analysis, ensure data security, and adapt to law changes. The system would also reduce research time and narrow the search scope for relevant court rulings. To achieve this, we developed a prototype AI-based solution that analyzes legal inquiries, compares them with a case database, and provides decision-support insights. This innovation was a game-changer for the client's daily operations, taking the manual research workload off employees and analyzing over 100,000 documents for them. The system also responds to tax inquiries, serving as an assistant to legal analysts. Implementing this solution saved a full day of work for each case analysis, cutting research time from about 8 hours to just 1 minute.

Insurance Firm

Complex and time-consuming insurance policy claims analysis was a major challenge for this finance firm. They were looking for a solution that would reduce claim processing time, leading to faster resolutions for customers and higher throughput for the company.

We created an AI system prototype that handles clients' queries efficiently, 24/7. The tool analyzes customers’ claims, current contracts, and case history. We ensured the AI assistant's responses are consistent with clients’ policies, reducing the risk of human error while remaining informative. Employees can further modify the system's responses, and their adjustments help fine-tune the model for future use. This human-AI collaboration significantly improved the process, cutting response time from 40 minutes to just 5-10 minutes, making it 4 to 8 times faster than before.

Custom AI assistant as a tool tailored to improve your business processes

As you can see from the examples, a custom AI assistant can significantly increase your organization's productivity. While having an AI-powered digital assistant is beneficial, a custom-built one can elevate your operations even further. These tools are designed to meet your specific needs and handle even the most unique tasks. Although creating a custom AI assistant requires initial investment, it quickly pays for itself through process optimization.

Key benefits of using a custom AI assistant include:

• Automating complex and repetitive tasks: By taking over time-consuming processes, a custom AI assistant frees up valuable human resources for more strategic work.
• Enhancing efficiency and productivity: Automation streamlines operations, improving overall efficiency and output.
• Integrating with existing systems: These tools seamlessly integrate with your current workflows and systems.
• Providing real-time data analysis and monitoring: A custom AI assistant quickly analyzes large datasets, offering actionable insights and monitoring crucial events as they happen.
• Facilitating faster decision-making: Real-time data processing and recommendations help businesses respond swiftly to changes and opportunities.
• Reducing human error: Automation ensures consistency and accuracy, minimizing mistakes in critical operations.
• Scalability and flexibility: A custom AI assistant can adapt to business growth and evolving needs, ensuring long-term relevance, and utility.
• Enhancing data utilization: Better data analysis leads to more informed decision-making.
• Improving control and security: enhanced measures ensure data integrity and protection.
• Focusing on strategic areas: By handling repeatable processes, AI copilots allow employees to focus more on strategic initiatives.

Navigating the challenges of custom virtual assistant deployment

As with any new solutions, implementing custom AI assistants comes with its own set of challenges. Here are some common issues businesses may encounter when introducing custom digital assistants:

• Identifying real valuable processes to automate: Business should know and target areas where improvement will be most beneficial.
• Prioritizing key cases: Especially at the beginning of AI implementation, it’s crucial to pick your battles wisely, so focus on the most important cases first.
• Prototyping: To get a great final product, you have to invest time and money for prototyping first.
• Managing fear of AI within the organization: This might require extra training and education for the team, different management approaches, and fostering an open-minded attitude towards AI usage in the company.
• Need for a human assistant: Especially for improving processes with GenAI, as it’s considered a new technology, it’s advisable to deploy commercial systems step-by-step and remaining human as the final verification approver.

From hours to minutes: optimizing processes for faster launches and reduced costs

Process optimization is a great option for companies that want to cut down time of their business processes and therefore, reduce costs. With integration of AI-powered tools, such as custom assistants, you can boost your productivity and manage resources better. Tedious job gets done for you and your employees, and it gets done fast. As I illustrated in the article, by introducing a custom virtual assistant, processes are shortened from months to hours and from hours to minutes. Integration of artificial intelligence into your practices can unlock new levels of efficiency, helping your business to thrive.

If you're still wondering how to use AI in your daily operations, check out our AI workshop.