You'd have thought faster popcorn would be the result, but instead, we stood there chatting about the kiosk we'd just ordered from.
Of course, by now you're likely used to it...
At the airport.
At McDonalds.
On the Starbucks app.
That day, though, in that movie theater, the concessions kiosk was a bit of a novelty for us.
So while we waited for our popcorn and the movie to start, I posed the question to my son...
Do you think they make more money by using the kiosk? Or less?
(Yes, this is the stuff I subjected my 6th grader to. You can never start too early training for critical thinking LOL.)
Our first conjecture was what you might expect.
They save money by not having to pay for labor to take your order.
But I was there with my kid. And anyone who knows why they place sugary cereals at eye level in the grocery aisle also knows why there's that candy display, at kid height, when you order your popcorn.
I'd just escaped ordering the box of Sour Patch Kids and the box of Reese's Pieces and ONLY ordered the popcorn.
So less labor, but smaller cart size.
McDonalds has clearly figured out the trade off. But will your business?
The more we blindly try something novel and new or put automations in place or use AI because it's the thing to do, the more likely we are to miss sight of our real goals. Namely...
PROFIT.
Reducing costs is great. Trying out a new piece of tech is good too. And some hit to revenue might be worth it.
In the short term.
But as businesses, we're still aiming for higher profit overall and long term success and sticking power.
(Okay, so maybe you personally are focused on more time back in your day without reducing your income. Think of that as higher profit per unit of time. Still profit.)
Losing sight of that goal is where any operational change initiative or quest for innovation can start to go wrong.
While automation and AI adoption in professional services firms is accelerating, only 18% of organizations even track ROI on their AI initiatives, and most focus on internal cost savings or employee usage rather than profit margins or revenue growth.
That's a potential miss for a lot of businesses.
Key Questions for Scaling with Automation and AI
Instead of buying into hype alone or assuming potential efficiencies and bright ideas will get you where you want to go, you need to keep the full picture in mind. And you can do that by asking yourself some key questions:
What am I really trying to achieve here?
Is it to increase profit?
Is it to test out a new idea, innovation or process?
Is it to enact operational change, cultural change or both?
Adopting Automation and AI In Professional Services
Understanding your desired outcome - whether it is long-term or short-term, financial or non-financial - is key to ensuring you make good decisions at the outset and along the way.
How do I want to treat this internally?
As a full change initiative?
As a test run or experiment?
As a first step?
Failure of an experiment might be a win at scale because you just learned what not to do. Spending money in a test run can be far superior to going all in then missing the mark.
It also helps when explaining to people what's happening. Some people view any change as a sign of impending layoffs. Or even just view it as an offense to their person and productivity. Being able to put the initiative in context with help mitigate these problems.
How will I know whether it is successful?
How will you know by milestone?
How will you determine this at scale?
What subjective and objective factors can help you decide this even when you've become emotionally attached to an idea?
Not even professionals like to let go of their good ideas gone sour. And there's always the possibility of shifting your view to make it fit a new world order. So having clarity from the outset matters.
Building an Investor Mindset Around Automation and AI
In the investment world, this data - where we start from and where we intend to end up - would have been part of what we called the "thesis statement," a summary of the go forward opportunity and how its success would be measured.
To keep people honest, as markets shifted and investment opportunities came to fruition or not, the success was measured against this initial thesis, not just what actually transpired to make it work or not.
So what's your take? What's your thesis?
A little critical thinking plus professional guidance can help you avoid both execution errors and the possibility of sacrificing your goals for the sake of Shiny Object Syndrome or initiatives-gone-wild.
If you're interested in taking a more robust approach to improving your operations and your profit, see if you're a fit for our services. Set up an introductory call today.
