Every business needs an AI champion (and yours is probably in Business Improvement).
AI is not a side project for whoever has a spare afternoon. It is a role, and the person who should own it is probably already on your team, paid to make the business run better.
Most businesses are trying to “do AI” the way they did the last software rollout: buy a tool, send a memo, hope it sticks. It does not stick. AI is not a tool you buy. It is a capability you build, and capabilities need an owner.
That owner is your AI champion. And in most businesses, that person already exists. They are sitting in Business Improvement.
AI is an operating change, not a software purchase
The companies pulling ahead are not the ones with the most licenses. They are the ones who gave someone the job of finding where AI fits and building it in. That is a structural decision, not a procurement one. You are not adding a tool to the stack. You are reshaping a role you already have.
The role already exists. It is called Business Improvement.
Think about what your Business Improvement (or Continuous Improvement, or Operations) person already does. They hunt for waste. They map how the work actually happens. They get people to change how they do things. They are measured on making the business run leaner.
That is the AI champion job description, almost word for word. The only thing that changes is the most powerful tool they have ever been handed. For years their output was a better process and a slide recommending it. Now they can build the thing that makes the process better, the same week they spot the problem.
They become the person who drives all of it
The automations, the internal tools, the AI habits that spread across the team. Not a committee. Not an outside agency on a monthly retainer. One person on your payroll, with the mandate and the tools to keep shipping.
Before, they found a slow manual job and wrote up how to fix it, then waited for IT or budget or next quarter. Now they build the app or automation that fixes it and put it in front of the person doing the job by Friday.
Give them the mandate, not just the task
Here is where most companies get it wrong. They tell their improvement person to “look into AI” on top of everything else: no time, no air cover, no title. It stays a side project, and side projects die. Restructuring means making it real:
- Name the role.Your AI champion, not “the person who is into ChatGPT.”
- Protect the time. A few hours a week, in the calendar, not stolen from lunch.
- Back them publicly.When they ship something that changes how a team works, that is the point, not a distraction from their “real” job.
They do not need to be technical
The fear is always the same: “they are not a developer.” They do not need to be. Modern AI tools do the heavy lifting; the champion points them at the right problems, which is exactly the instinct a Business Improvement person already has. (More on the role itself in what an AI champion actually does.)
The one thing we would not do is rest it all on one person. Train two, a champion and a partner, so the capability does not walk out the door if they take leave or move on.
Where this leaves you
The “AI hire” most businesses are agonising over is already on the payroll. You do not need a six-figure engineer. Take the person who already improves your business for a living, give them the title, the time, and the tools, and let them drive.
That is exactly what we set up. Over four weeks we train your champion and a partner, hand over the toolchain and a first app built together, then walk away. No ongoing fees. Prefer we run it for you instead? We can, as a managed service with a monthly fee.
Read next: how we work across Setup and Run, or jump to pricing for both paths.
Book a 30-minute discovery call.
We'll show you where AI fits the work you already do, and what it's worth once it's running. Then we point you to the best way to get there: we set you up to own it in-house (Setup, no ongoing fees), or we run it for you (Run, a managed service with a monthly fee).