Organizations are eager to harness AI but projects are often scoped around vague ambitions or "shiny" capabilities rather than delivering specific business value. Successful AI transformation begins with identifying the challenges—what's not working and why? Challenges can be identified in both internal and external processes.
Here's the catch: everyone has to be on the same page. A unified discovery approach ensures you don't miss high-impact opportunities and establishes a repeatable playbook for scaling AI across your organization.
Automating back-office processes, employee workflows, knowledge management, and operational efficiency
Enhancing digital products, customer support, personalization, and engagement across apps, websites, and service channels
There are five key steps to help you and your team identify use cases for AI transformation. This systematic approach ensures you capture both internal and external opportunities while maintaining focus on business value.
Set up the right team and documentation approach
Collect all potential use cases across domains
Visualize customer and business workflows
Document structured use case information
Evaluate impact, feasibility, and strategic alignment
Collecting the use cases is really only half the story. Understanding how to go about getting the inputs needed is the other half. Setting up the right processes ensures you capture valuable insights from across your organization.
Product, business, tech, support, marketing, and—for external use cases—customers.
Ask for real examples, "a day in the life," and what "great" would look like.
Provide a worksheet or digital form for each use case.
Avoid vague or generic descriptions—get to the real workflow, queries, and desired outcomes. Make sure this is all clearly documented!
Capture a summary of the potential unwritten rules, workarounds, and best practices that you'll need to fully document if the project goes into implementation.
Throw out ideas and see what sticks. Think both broadly and specifically, and don't be afraid to share. As you and your team toss ideas out, start bucketing these use cases across two main domains.
Consider repetitive, rules-driven tasks that are creating bottlenecks and slowing processes:
- Contract review
- HR onboarding
- Invoice processing
- Compliance checks
Reflect on how customers interact with your business:
- Customer support
- Intelligent search
- Digital onboarding
- Product recommendations
- In-app assistants
Now, map out the external and internal journeys and identify where use cases from step two could fit within these journeys. This visualization helps you see opportunities and friction points clearly.
How customers discover your company
New customer setup and initial experience
Ongoing product usage and interaction
Customer service touchpoints
Continued value and loyalty
For internal use cases it's a bit different. Rather than having to guess where points of friction may be, you have the answers at your fingertips. Talk to various teams to understand where they could use automation or are needing efficiency improvements.
- Tie pain points to specific business processes and workflows
- Consider both high-volume, repetitive tasks and "long tail" activities that cumulatively drive cost or risk
Now that you have journeys illustrated and potential use cases mapped to each journey, use the following worksheet—or use the questions in a workshop format—to capture critical information on each use case.
What is the pain/inefficiency or opportunity?
Internal users (roles/depts) or customer segment
Target employee type or customer persona
Typical queries or actions
Where does this occur?
Time saved, accuracy, satisfaction, revenue
How often? How many users/transactions?
Description of current workflow and friction points
What could go wrong?
How important is this to company goals?
Is needed data/process access available?
Here are two concrete examples showing how to apply the structured use case framework to both internal and customer-facing scenarios.
Once you've examined each potential use case both internally and externally, you'll have to evaluate how possible it actually is to integrate AI into those instances. Explore each mapped out use case and score or rank based on multiple factors.
How will this use case impact business value, customer experience, and revenue or cost savings?
What is your data and process readiness? Is there technical complexity for this integration?
How will this impact your brand? What compliance or operational implications are there?
Does it advance a key company initiative?
A disciplined approach to use case discovery is the linchpin of successful AI transformation. By engaging stakeholders and cross-functional teams, structuring your discovery, and focusing on both the customer and internal experience, you lay the foundation for repeatable AI projects that deliver real value quickly.
Start with this framework, and iterate as you learn. The journey to AI maturity begins with asking the right questions and capturing the right details.
Begin your AI transformation journey with a systematic approach
Develop your AI muscle through continuous improvement
Focus on measurable business impact and customer experience
For further guidance, templates, or workshop facilitation, contact us directly or schedule a demo.
A practical guide for determining internal and external AI use cases