Deployment 03 · Maritime operations
When the correct solution used less AI
A major shipping organisation approached us after a poor experience with an earlier technology provider. We did not begin by proposing an AI platform. We began by asking what had gone wrong.
The organisation
A major shipping organisation that had already invested in technology from an earlier provider and had a poor experience with it.
The problem as presented
The organisation approached us expecting a replacement platform.
What we found
We did not begin by proposing an AI platform. We began by asking what had gone wrong.
We studied how the organisation worked, why the previous solution had failed, and how similar companies approached the same problem.
The decision and trade-offs
Proposing a large AI system would have been the commercially obvious answer, and the organisation would probably have accepted it.
The evidence pointed somewhere else. The final answer required better workflow design, product judgement, and disciplined engineering. AI played a smaller role.
The system
What we built was shaped by the workflow rather than by a technology choice made in advance.
How people used it
The work stayed where the organisation already performed it. Nothing had to be relearned to gain the benefit.
Control and permissions
Because the intervention was smaller, the surface that had to be governed was smaller. Fewer autonomous actions meant fewer approvals to design and fewer ways for the system to be wrong.
Result
The measured result has not yet been approved for publication by the organisation involved. We will publish it here once it has been.
What we learned
Our responsibility is not to maximise the amount of AI inside a company. It is to find what best fits the business.
A previous failure is useful evidence. Understanding why an earlier system did not work is often faster than starting the analysis again.
Building an AI workforce inside Microsoft Teams
Do not begin with a software requirement.Begin with the work that is not working.
Tell us where people lose time, information becomes difficult to find, decisions slow down, employees repeat the same work, or an existing system holds the organisation back.
We will study the operation before deciding what should be built.