Biography:
Oliver Kleinknecht is a partner at CPC AG, focusing on digitalisation and AI transformation, project and programme management as well as change management and organisational design. Before joining CPC he worked as a developer, architect and project manager for a global IT service provider. His credo: knowledge and experience are the basis for success, which only comes from putting them into practice.
The AI transformation, with its opportunities and risks, is increasingly preoccupying public-sector organizations too. A current project shows how this path can be shaped in a structured way, with legal certainty and targeted change support.
Starting point and challenges
Our client, an organization for allocating funding grants, was under considerable cost pressure from higher-level ministries. The clear expectation: processes were to become more efficient and more economical through the use of artificial intelligence.
At the same time, pressure came from the workforce itself. Many employees were already experimenting on their own initiative with tools such as ChatGPT or image generators and wanted to use them in their daily work as well. The challenge was to prevent AI from emerging as shadow IT and instead to introduce it in a structured way, with legal certainty and in line with existing processes. The goal was both to meet the client's efficiency requirements and to make targeted use of employees' motivation and engagement.
Approach in the project
The starting point was a comprehensive AI readiness assessment. In it we analyzed the organization's maturity along central dimensions: technology, law, skills, culture, governance, process digitalization and data availability. The results served as the basis for a gap analysis against the desired target picture.
The challenge: there was no explicitly formulated target picture, but a clear purpose. In order not to lose momentum in an additional strategy-finding process, we jointly developed four strategic options for the use of AI:
- operational excellence,
- ecosystem orientation,
- focus on employees and
- development of new business fields
Management opted for operational excellence and a focus on relieving employees through AI.
The AI use cases identified in the assessment were evaluated in terms of their benefit as well as the technical, procedural and legal implementation effort. From this a prioritized roadmap emerged. The top use cases were worked out in detail for implementation over the next 100 days. In addition, the organization received recommendations on how to develop its AI maturity in a targeted way over a period of three years.
Lessons learned
A central learning of the AI transformation is the importance of committed individuals. It takes employees who drive the topic forward with conviction and lead by example in everyday work – even independently of external consulting.
Equally decisive is the role of top management. AI transformation only succeeds sustainably if management has a fundamental understanding of what AI can achieve, where its limits lie, and if it actively takes on the sponsor role.
It is worthwhile to start with a few, clearly prioritized use cases, in order to avoid overwhelm and to create something tangible and palpable ("small wins").
Two thoughts to take away
"AI is not a strategy – but AI can help to achieve strategic goals.""AI projects are not IT projects. They must be driven by the specialist departments and their understanding of business value."
Would you like to know how AI can concretely relieve your organization?
We would be glad to talk with you about sensible fields of application, maturity and first steps.
Get in touch with us here.
