Light manufacturer · ~120 staff
Reporting was three exports reconciled by hand.
Production, inventory, and finance each ran their own system, and leadership saw a combined picture once a month, assembled by hand from spreadsheet exports. AI tools were banned on paper, but staff were using them across the company.
Representative profile. Systems are typical, not named.
The work
What we did, and why
The company had banned AI, and staff were using it anyway. The AI security and governance assessment lists the AI tools in use and what each can reach. It found personal AI accounts across the office and a browser add-on on the sales team's laptops. It also found an AI feature switched on inside the ERP, the system that runs operations, that no one had reviewed.
The AI Use Policy replaced the ban with rules by role and by kind of data. Sales can use an approved assistant on quotes but may not use it on customer contracts. Finance may not put ledger figures into any tool outside the company's own Microsoft account. The ERP's built-in AI feature went through an access review and stayed on, with logging enabled.
Once the systems were listed, the reporting work was straightforward. The ERP, warehouse, and accounting systems could all be connected directly, and the dashboard brought them together in the company's own Microsoft cloud account. The controller's monthly spreadsheet merge was retired in the second month. The first automation, an alert when inventory and production numbers disagree, was chosen because the dashboard showed how often that happened.
The result
Where the company stands now
The controller no longer builds the monthly report by hand, and leadership reads the same dashboard the floor managers use. The first automation on the plan is an alert when inventory and production numbers disagree.
For leadership
What changed for the people running it
The owner no longer waits until the fifteenth of the month for the numbers. The plant manager and the CFO now work from the same figures when they disagree about production.
This is a representative profile, drawn from the kinds of companies we work with. Figures are illustrative. We publish named results only with a client's written permission.
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Why did the AI ban not work?
The ban was on paper, and staff were using AI tools across the company anyway. An AI Use Policy replaced it with rules by role and by kind of data.
Which systems feed the dashboard now?
The ERP, the warehouse system, and accounting feed it directly. Production, inventory, and spend sit in one place, and the hand-built monthly merge was retired.
Next step
Your company would start with a written assessment.
Every engagement on this site began by writing down what the company already ran. You keep the assessment whether or not you hire us for the work that follows.