The first AI solution in 30 days

Objective: clarity about benefits, risks and scope; green light for a limited pilot; basic enablement.

Checklist:

• Define goals: select 2-3 measurable goals (e.g. speed up email creation by 30%, halve meeting notes, shorten research by 40%).

• Draft simple AI usage guidelines: Data handling (no sensitive data in public tools), human-in-the-loop, transparency, source citation, escalation.

• Release toolset: Microsoft 365 Copilot, Azure OpenAI or equivalent; clarify license and data framework with IT.

• Define data sources: Permitted content for AI (guidelines, templates, intranet, product documents); exclude personal/sensitive data.

• Designate roles: Executive sponsor, product owner, IT/security contact, 2-3 pilot champions.

• Create risk register: Legal/data protection aspects (revDSG), protection of intellectual property, hallucination risks; define measures and release criteria.

• Enable access: Activate pilot users, check Teams/SharePoint/OneDrive structure for secure use.

Mini templates:

• AI usage policy (1 page): Purpose, permitted use, rules for sensitive data, review/updates, contact.

• Pilot charter: problem, success criteria, scope, schedule, roles, risks, exit criteria.

Goal: Prioritized list of AI use cases and 1-2 productive quick wins.

Steps:

1. Record workflows: select 3 roles (e.g. sales, customer service, back office); list 5 repetitive tasks each.

2. Evaluate tasks: Impact (1-5) × Effort (1-5) × Risk (1-5); favor high impact, medium risk.

3. 1 Select use case, e.g:

   • Compose/improve emails and offers

   • Summarize meetings, tickets or PDFs

   • Create product FAQs or knowledge articles

   • Build prompt templates for recurring tasks

4. Delivering quick wins:

   • Create a shared prompt library in OneNote or SharePoint

   • Standardize 5-10 prompts (inputs, tone, restrictions, examples, review checklist)

   • Document "human-in-the-loop" audits (facts, figures, legal language)

Example prompt template:

• Goal: Formulate customer response with next steps

• Inputs: customer email, our policy summary, desired tone: professional, friendly

• Restrictions: max. 150 words, 3 bullet points with next steps, 1 query

• Output format: Subject line + e-mail text

• Review: Check facts, data and figures; no commitments without approval

Goal: A functioning pilot project with test users and basic training.

Examples for pilots:

• Meeting summary assistant in teams with quality checklist

• Document Q&A bot on policy PDFs (secure, limited corpus) with source citation

• Sales e-mail/offer assistant with own templates and sound

Checklist:

• Configure tools: Access, connectors, logging, storage

• Create evaluation set: 10 real tasks per use case; define acceptance criteria

• Test with 5-10 users: accuracy, time savings, satisfaction (CSAT 1-5), record problems

• Training: 60-minute session on prompt patterns, dos/don'ts, examples, guidelines

• Iterate: Improve prompt patterns, add guard rails, optimize instructions

Quality checks against hallucinations:

• Provide source material; request citations

• Narrow down the task and output format

• Prefer retrieval to web search for internal company topics

• Always check critical content (legal, financial, HR)

Goal: Controlled rollout to 20-50 users and data-based decision on scaling.

Checklist:

• Rollout scope: 10-25 users in 1-2 teams; nominate champions per team

• Active guard rails: guidelines, rules for sensitive data, clear "red lines", reporting channel for problems

• Measurement:

  • Productivity: minutes saved per task, weekly time saved per user

  • Quality: acceptance rate of AI outputs, error rate

  • Adoption: Weekly active users, number of prompts per user

• Feedback loop: Monthly office hours; improvement backlog with ROI estimate

• Decision: Continue pilot, scale to other teams or pause and fix blockers