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 use was officially not allowed and unofficially everywhere.
Representative profile. Systems are typical, not named.
The work
What we did, and why
A ban on AI is a rule no one can enforce, and this company had one. The AI security and governance assessment found the usual result. Personal AI accounts across the office, and a browser add-on on the sales team's laptops. Inside the ERP, the system that runs operations, an AI feature had been switched on that no one had reviewed.
The AI Use Policy replaced the ban with rules by role and by kind of data. Sales could use an approved assistant on quotes but not on customer contracts. Finance could not put ledger numbers into anything outside the company's own Microsoft account. The ERP's built-in AI went through an access review and stayed, with logging turned on.
The reporting problem was simpler once the systems were listed. ERP, warehouse, and accounting could all be connected directly. The base dashboard pulled all three into the company's own Microsoft cloud account, and the controller's monthly spreadsheet merge was retired in the second month. The first automation feature, an alert when inventory and production numbers disagree, came straight from the dashboard showing how often they did.
Where they stand
The outcome
The monthly hand-assembled report is gone; leadership reads the same dashboard the floor managers do. First automation on the plan: an alert when inventory and production numbers disagree.
For leadership
What changed
The owner stopped waiting for the fifteenth of the month. The plant manager and the CFO argue from the same numbers now, which was the point.
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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