Where is the low hanging fruit with AI?

Start with the boring work.

People ask me where to start with agents. They want a list.

The honest answer is that it depends on what your business does and what you are trying to get out of it, which is a useless thing to say to someone who just wants to begin.

So here is the part that does not depend on any of that.

The work that is done the same way every time

A team that runs the same kind of job over and over. Work that moves along a line, where the next step is always the next step.

Not the clever work. Not the work you are proud of.

It is low hanging for a boring reason

When the work is the same shape every time you can tell whether the thing did it right. You have something to compare it to.

Most of these projects do not fall over because the model was not good enough. They fall over because nobody could say whether the output was any good.

That is the part people skip. The repeatable work is not easier for the machine. It is easier for you, because you already know what a good one looks like.

Then your business model decides how far you take it

If that repeatable work is what you sell, an agent changes what you can charge. If it is overhead, it just buys back hours.

Same work, two different answers. That is why nobody can hand you the list. From the outside the job looks identical and the reason for doing it is not.

Two questions before you build anything

Does the rule have to hold every time, or is the odd miss survivable. And can the rule actually be written down.

Must hold, and can be written down, is code rather than an agent. Certain, instant and free to run. Matters, but cannot be written down, is a person. What is left in the middle is where an agent earns its keep.

The long version is when to use AI and when not to, and the two questions are here.

The shape comes out of that, you do not pick it

One call, a workflow, an agent. You do not choose one off a menu. You go through the forks in the job and decide which ones you are writing down, and what is left over is what the system decides for itself. How much to let AI decide.

Repeatable work has fewer forks worth handing over. That is one more reason it is the safe place to begin.

So

Where is the repeatable work in your business?