Process mapping before AI deployment means describing how work in the company actually takes place – who does what, in what order, how long it takes, how many times a day it is repeated and where errors and waiting arise. Without this step, tools get deployed on tasks that are not the bottleneck, and no result shows. Suitable candidates for a start have three characteristics: they recur often, they work with structured input, and an error in them has no immediate irreversible impact. Mapping also reveals cases where the solution is simplifying the process, not automating it. It makes sense to carry it out with the people who actually do the work, not according to directives, because the real procedure regularly differs from the documented one.
See also: AI use case, Company AI Audit, Internal hackathon.
