The AI Advisory Board principle
A 50-person company runs on about a thousand repeating processes
AI can already run each of them. The only question is who moves all of them to AI. Here is why only your own people can.
What a process is
A process is a small action that repeats: something comes in, a person handles it, the result moves on.
- A request comes in — prepare a quote
- An inbound call — log it and pass it to a manager
- Invite a candidate to an interview
- Match an invoice with a payment
- Compile the weekly sales report
- Remind a client about a meeting
Estimate: every employee does 20–40 such repeating actions a day. 50 people × 20 actions = 1,000 processes. A large company has several thousand.
Here they are, one by one
The APQC process framework, an international standard, lists 1,297 concrete activities that make up a company's work. We sorted them into departments. Open the map and hover over a cell to see the process.
- Sales · 60
- Marketing · 82
- Customer service · 54
- Operations / production · 257
- Finance / accounting · 190
- HR / recruiting · 94
- Procurement / logistics · 93
- IT / data · 251
- Management · 216
Process groups by department
Sales: 60 processes
- Develop sales forecast · 4
- Develop sales partner/alliance relationships · 12
- Establish overall sales budgets · 6
- Manage leads/opportunities · 8
- Manage customers and accounts · 5
- Develop and manage sales proposals, bids, and quotes · 15
- Manage sales orders · 6
- Manage sales partners and alliances · 4
Marketing: 82 processes
- Perform customer and market intelligence analysis · 6
- Evaluate and prioritize market opportunities · 4
- Define offering and customer value proposition · 4
- Define pricing strategy · 4
- Define and manage channel strategy · 8
- Analyze and manage channel performance · 5
- Develop marketing communication strategy · 8
- Design and manage customer loyalty program · 5
- Establish marketing budgets · 4
- Develop and manage pricing · 10
- Develop and manage promotional activities · 8
- Track customer management measures · 5
- Analyze and respond to customer insight · 5
- Develop and manage packaging strategy · 4
- Manage product marketing material · 2
Customer service: 54 processes
- Define warranty claims · 5
- Plan and manage customer service work force · 4
- Manage customer service problems, requests, and inquiries · 6
- Manage customer complaints · 5
- Process returns · 2
- Process warranty claims · 10
- Manage supplier recovery · 2
- Service products · 4
- Measure customer satisfaction with customer problems, requests, and inquiries handling · 3
- Measure customer satisfaction with customer-complaint handling and resolution · 3
- Measure customer satisfaction with products and services · 5
- Evaluate and manage warranty performance · 5
Operations / production: 257 processes
- Manage product and service portfolio · 6
- Manage product and service life cycle · 5
- Manage patents, copyrights, and regulatory requirements · 5
- Manage product and service master data · 10
- Perform discovery research · 3
- Generate new product/service concepts · 5
- Define product/service development requirements · 3
- Design and prototype products and services · 14
- Test market for new or revised products and services · 4
- Prepare for production/service delivery · 5
- Schedule production · 7
- Produce/Assemble product · 6
- Perform quality testing · 6
- Maintain production records and manage lot traceability · 2
- Establish service delivery governance · 4
- Develop service delivery strategies · 7
- Manage service delivery resource demand · 8
- Create and manage resource plan · 6
- Enable service delivery resources · 7
- Initiate service delivery · 7
- Execute service delivery · 7
- Complete service delivery · 7
- Develop property strategy and long term vision · 3
- Plan facility · 5
- Provide workspace and facilities · 2
- Manage facilities operations · 2
- Manage capital program for assets · 3
- Design and plan asset construction · 5
- Schedule and perform construction work · 5
- Manage asset construction · 4
- Plan asset maintenance · 7
- Manage asset maintenance · 7
- Perform asset maintenance · 5
- Develop exit strategy · 2
- Perform abandonment · 4
- Perform waste and hazardous goods management · 8
- Establish and maintain process management governance · 4
- Define and manage process frameworks · 2
- Define processes · 5
- Manage process performance · 3
- Improve processes · 4
- Manage portfolio · 3
- Manage programs · 4
- Manage projects · 6
- Establish quality requirements · 5
- Evaluate performance to requirements · 2
- Manage non-conformance · 5
- Implement and maintain the enterprise quality management system (EQMS) · 6
- Determine environmental health and safety impacts · 2
- Develop EHS program · 4
- Monitor and manage EHS program · 6
Finance / accounting: 190 processes
- Perform planning/budgeting/forecasting · 5
- Perform cost accounting and control · 6
- Perform cost management · 4
- Evaluate and manage financial performance · 7
- Process customer credit · 7
- Invoice customer · 5
- Process accounts receivable (AR) · 5
- Manage and process collections · 7
- Manage and process adjustments/deductions · 6
- Manage financial policies and procedures · 5
- Perform general accounting · 9
- Perform fixed-asset accounting · 9
- Perform financial reporting · 8
- Perform capital planning and project approval · 4
- Perform capital project accounting · 5
- Report time · 5
- Manage pay · 8
- Manage and process payroll taxes · 5
- Process accounts payable (AP) · 11
- Process expense reimbursements · 5
- Manage corporate credit cards · 6
- Manage treasury policies and procedures · 8
- Manage cash · 8
- Manage in-house bank accounts · 7
- Manage debt and investment · 8
- Monitor and execute risk and hedging transactions · 6
- Establish internal controls, policies, and procedures · 5
- Operate controls and monitor compliance with internal controls policies and procedures · 2
- Report on internal controls compliance · 4
- Develop tax strategy and plan · 3
- Process taxes · 7
HR / recruiting: 94 processes
- Develop human resources strategy · 10
- Develop and implement workforce strategy and policies · 15
- Monitor and update strategy, plans, and policies · 4
- Manage employee requisitions · 7
- Recruit/Source candidates · 5
- Screen and select candidates · 4
- Manage new hire/re-hire · 3
- Manage applicant information · 4
- Manage employee orientation and deployment · 3
- Manage employee performance · 4
- Manage employee career development · 3
- Develop and train employees · 7
- Develop and manage reward, recognition, and motivation programs · 8
- Manage and administer benefits · 4
- Manage employee assistance and retention · 2
- Manage workforce scheduling · 2
- Relocate employees and manage assignments · 1
- Develop workforce analytics · 5
- Implement workforce analytics · 3
Procurement / logistics: 93 processes
- Develop production and materials strategies · 9
- Manage demand for products · 7
- Create materials plan · 6
- Create and manage master production schedule · 3
- Plan distribution requirements · 12
- Establish distribution planning constraints · 4
- Review distribution planning policies · 3
- Develop quality standards and procedures · 3
- Provide sourcing governance and perform category management · 7
- Select suppliers and develop/maintain contracts · 4
- Order materials and services · 7
- Manage suppliers · 4
- Provide logistics governance · 7
- Plan and manage inbound material flow · 5
- Operate warehousing · 8
- Operate outbound transportation · 4
IT / data: 251 processes
- Understand IT customer needs · 2
- Identify IT customer transformation needs · 4
- Plan and communicate IT services · 5
- Provide IT transformation guidance · 9
- Develop and manage IT service levels · 7
- Manage IT customer relationships · 5
- Analyze service performance · 4
- Define business technology and governance strategy · 6
- Manage IT portfolio strategy · 6
- Define and maintain enterprise architecture · 4
- Define IT service management strategy · 7
- Control IT management system · 9
- Manage IT value portfolio · 4
- Define and manage technology innovation · 7
- Develop IT compliance, risk, and security strategy · 10
- Develop IT resilience strategy · 4
- Control IT risk, compliance, and security · 10
- Plan and manage IT continuity · 3
- Develop and manage IT security, privacy, and data protection · 7
- Conduct and analyze IT compliance assessments · 5
- Develop and execute IT resilience and continuity operations · 6
- Manage IT user identity and authorization · 8
- Define business information and analytics strategy · 3
- Define and maintain business information architecture · 5
- Define and execute business information lifecycle planning and control · 2
- Manage business information · 4
- Develop service/solution and integration strategy · 7
- Manage service/solution lifecycle planning · 5
- Develop and manage service/solution architecture · 8
- Execute IT service/solution creation and testing · 1
- Perform service/solution maintenance and testing · 1
- Develop and manage service/solution deployment strategy · 6
- Plan service and solution implementation · 7
- Manage change deployment control · 7
- Implement technology solutions · 9
- Perform service and solution rollout · 7
- Define and establish service delivery strategy · 5
- Define and develop service support strategy · 6
- Plan and manage service delivery control · 1
- Develop and manage infrastructure resource planning · 5
- Define service support planning · 10
- Develop and manage service delivery operations · 8
- Manage infrastructure resource administration · 6
- Operate IT user support · 6
Management: 216 processes
- Assess the external environment · 10
- Survey market and determine customer needs and wants · 3
- Assess the internal environment · 6
- Establish strategic vision · 3
- Conduct organization restructuring opportunities · 3
- Develop overall mission statement · 3
- Define and evaluate strategic options to achieve the mission · 11
- Set/Develop long-term enterprise strategy · 7
- Create organizational design · 8
- Develop and set organizational objectives · 3
- Formulate business unit strategies · 3
- Develop customer experience strategy · 4
- Develop strategic initiatives · 3
- Evaluate strategic initiatives · 2
- Select strategic initiatives · 2
- Establish high-level measures · 3
- Develop business models · 4
- Maintain business models · 4
- Establish the enterprise risk framework and policies · 5
- Oversee and coordinate enterprise risk management activities · 9
- Manage business unit and function risk · 7
- Establish compliance framework and policies · 4
- Manage regulatory compliance · 9
- Manage government relations · 6
- Manage relations with quasi-government bodies · 4
- Manage relations with trade or industry groups · 3
- Ensure compliance · 2
- Manage outside counsel · 6
- Protect intellectual property · 4
- Plan for change · 15
- Design the change · 9
- Implement change · 5
- Sustain improvement · 3
- Develop KM strategy · 9
- Assess KM capabilities · 3
- Design and implement KM capabilities · 5
- Evolve and sustain KM capabilities · 3
- Define and manage organizational performance strategy · 2
- Benchmark performance · 5
- Evaluate performance · 8
- Develop sustainability capability · 5
- Manage sustainability capability · 3
A 50-person company skips some of these processes and runs others differently in every department. That is why "about a thousand" is an honest middle.
Source of the process list. Department mapping by AI Advisory Board. APQC’s Process Classification Framework® (PCF) is an open standard developed by APQC, a nonprofit that promotes benchmarking and best practices worldwide. The PCF is intended to facilitate organizational improvement through process management and benchmarking, regardless of industry, size, or geography. To download the full PCF or industry-specific versions of the PCF, as well as associated measures and benchmarking, please visit www.apqc.org/pcf.
The logic, step by step
- 1
A company is made of thousands of small processes
Break each person's work into actions, and a 50-person company has about a thousand repeating processes.
- 2
Every repeating process can go to AI, as a duty with an owner
A simple process runs as an automation: the same way every time, checked with a test. A more complex one is run by an AI agent, like the new agents from OpenAI or Claude. But always within limits: one named person is accountable, there are rules for what is allowed and what needs sign-off, and the result gets checked. An agent without an owner and rules is a risk, not a saving.
- 3
An automation has to be looked after, not just built
Processes, clients, prices and the AI models themselves change every month. A thousand automations are a thousand things to keep improving.
- 4
There will never be enough developers for this
One developer builds and maintains dozens of automations a year, not a thousand. And the developer does not know the process: every detail has to be explained by the person who does the work.
- 5
The person who does the work knows the process best
And today AI tools let that person build the automation without programming. All it takes is a method and training.
- 6
So we train employees and keep developers on the core
People automate their own work. Developers own what everyone shares: security, access, integrations between systems and the company's AI core.
- 7
The company of the future: everyone runs 10–20 automations and agents
Everyone who makes decisions spends most of the day running their automations instead of doing routine work: improving them, copying them to new markets and languages, connecting them with neighbouring departments.
The same thousand processes in numbers
| Compared | Outside developers | Your own employees |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of one automation | $500–2,000 | $15–75 |
| A thousand automations | $0.5–2M | one program per company |
| Who knows the process | second-hand | does it every day |
| When the process changes | new order, wait | the person fixes it |
| When the person leaves | the automation is orphaned | documented, registered, owned |
How we counted: the implementation program costs $14,999 per company; if people build 200–1,000 automations in six months, one costs $15–75. Developer prices are market rates for one automation.
It already works
11
client companies, from 20 to over 7,000 people
8 of 20
employees at one company built their first automation in a week
2 days
for a CRM built around the company's own process, instead of three months and $5–6k to contractors
The point in one sentence
A company has hundreds of times more processes than developers, so only its own people can move it to AI, while developers keep the shared core running.
Start by seeing your own processes
An org chart of your company shows who does what, how many hours go to routine work and which automations to start with. It is free.
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