AI Consulting for Business Process Automation
MSS Solutions llc
Overview
MSS Solutions experienced explosive growth, nearly doubling its workforce to 800 employees, which exposed critical bottlenecks as its manual back-end infrastructure struggled to scale, particularly within Accounting. To create a targeted solution, we initiated our AI consulting for business process automation engagement with a comprehensive, data-driven assessment. This analysis led to deep-dive contextual inquiries focused on two major pain points; the manual fire inspection documentation and the spreadsheet-driven collections process. We culminated the engagement by delivering detailed business process maps and a clear, prioritized automation roadmap for implementation.
Our Process
Discovery
Stakeholder Interviews, Contextual Inquiry, Business Model Canvas, Business Process Map
Company Overview
MSS Solutions, LLC is a comprehensive building systems and services company founded in 1996, offering a wide array of solutions across multiple locations with over 750 employees. The company provides end-to-end services, including design & development, mechanical construction, custom fabrication, and ongoing service & maintenance, alongside audits & assessments with a focus on sustainability. MSS specializes in crucial building systems such as HVAC, controls & building automation, security solutions, and fire alarm & life safety. They serve a diverse client base, including industrial/manufacturing, healthcare facilities, commercial buildings, and educational campuses, delivering value by optimizing system performance for new construction, major renovations, and existing infrastructure.
The Ask
MSS Solutions, having rapidly expanded from under 400 to nearly 800 employees in six years, faced significant challenges as its back-end infrastructure and processes struggled to keep pace with its growth and the demands of its increasing customer base. The most immediate priority was addressing issues in Accounting, specifically the manual processes of searching for remittance details across various platforms. Broadly, the objective was to automate these manual tasks across the company to free up valuable skilled technical personnel from mundane administrative duties. Our AI consulting for business process automation initiative was designed to begin with small,
Our AI Consulting for Business Process Automation
Department Interviews
To comprehensively understand MSS Solutions’ operational landscape and identify opportunities for automation, a targeted interview process was conducted with nine department heads. The primary goal was to gather granular, quantitative data on current workflows. For each department, the interviews captured the total number of people and identified the five or six most frequently completed workflows. For every single workflow, we documented the systems used, the number of users completing it, and the estimated time each user spent on it weekly, along with a rating of its repetitiveness. Furthermore, generalized pain points were collected to provide qualitative context. This robust dataset allowed for the scoring of each workflow based on its AI Readiness and potential Business Value, culminating in specific recommendations for which workflows were the most promising candidates for subsequent, in-depth contextual inquiry deep dives.
Contextual Inquiries
Following the workflow analysis, the client selected the highest-priority workflows, leading to two being chosen for contextual inquiry deep dives where we could observe the processes in action. The first was the fire inspection documentation process, which relied entirely on a robust but manual Excel workbook and was estimated to consume thousands of hours annually. The second focus was the collections process, which spans two departments and uses multiple to manually create reports.
Recommendations
After the contextual inquiries, we diagramed the workflows into business process maps. From there, we gave a list of AI and automation recommendations ranging from low to high impact and low to high effort for both the inspection documentation and collections workflow. The client chose from the list of recommendations for us to begin improving their workflows. Given the number of hours spent on inspection documentation, MSS Solutions opted to focus efforts automating that process.
Ongoing Support
We are currently working on a technical strategy for the inspection documentation workflow to begin research and implementation of potential SaaS solutions. As an ongoing partner, we hope to leverage our skills to help them with future AI and automation efforts by continuing our contextual inquiry and technical research throughout their various departments.
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Example Business Model Canvas
Example Workflow List
