How to Build an AI Action Plan Around a Business Problem
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the endless headlines, tools, and opinions about AI. But when you focus on solving a specific business problem, AI becomes more manageable and more impactful.
At Lokion, we often begin our work with organizations by helping them identify a real challenge they’re facing. From there, we help teams build a tailored, practical plan to apply AI in a meaningful way.
Want to build your own AI action plan around a business challenge? Here’s how to get started.
Step 1: Identify and Prioritize the Problem
Begin with a working session that brings together leaders from the department or team you are focusing on. The goal is to surface real, persistent pain points that cost time, money, or opportunity.
Questions to get you started:
- What’s slowing down our work or frustrating our team?
- Where do we see inefficiencies or manual processes?
- Are there any missed opportunities we’ve flagged but not addressed?
Once you've captured several issues, prioritize them based on impact and feasibility. Don’t try to solve everything at once. Instead, look for the challenge with the biggest upside and a manageable starting point. For example, your priority issue might be: “Our customer support team is overwhelmed with repetitive inquiries, which leads to slow response times and inconsistent service.”
Step 2: Turn the Problem Into a Clear Statement
Once you’ve selected a focus, translate it into a clear and specific problem statement. This will serve as the foundation for your action plan.
A good problem statement should include:
- The who (e.g., a team or process)
- The what (the issue or inefficiency)
- The why (impact or consequence)
For example, your problem statement might be: “Customer support specialists are spending 60% of their time responding to repetitive inquiries, leaving them with limited capacity to handle more complex or high-value requests.”
Step 3: Build Your AI Action Plan
With a well-defined problem, you can now start building your AI action plan. This process helps you move from ideas to action with a focus on efficiency, feasibility, and measurement.
Here’s what to include:
- Tool Selection: Explore relevant tools that align with your specific use case—this might be a chatbot, a text summarizer, or an automation platform.
- AI Pilot: Start small. Design a pilot to test your chosen tool with a limited audience, team, or process. Keep the scope narrow and the metrics clear.
- Workflow Integration: Consider how AI will interact with existing systems and people. Does the AI tool run in the background? Will it require new processes or training?
- Team Education: One client emphasized that success came not just from implementing a tool, but from investing in team education.
- KPIs & Tracking: Define what success looks like. You might focus on reduced response time, higher satisfaction scores, increased throughput, etc. Next, determine how and how often you’ll measure it.
- Timeline & Budget: Outline a realistic timeline for rollout, training, and review. Plan for both initial and ongoing costs, including licenses, internal time, and maintenance.
Create a Culture of Iteration and Sharing
One of the most valuable outcomes from our workshops is the cultural shift that happens when teams are given space to experiment and share. We’ve seen companies launch AI lunch and learns, Lean Coffees, and internal Grub & Grow sessions to discuss wins and failures.
These low-pressure forums help normalize AI experimentation and keep the momentum going after the initial plan is in place.
Real-World Example: From Confusion to Clarity
A mid-sized business came to us unsure of how to use AI. They had an initiative from leadership to incorporate AI, but they didn’t want to waste time or money on the wrong tools.
They walked away with a clear problem statement, a prioritized roadmap, a list of tools to pilot, and a rollout plan tailored to their goals and budget.
Start With One Problem, Not All of Them
If your organization is struggling to figure out where to start with AI, focusing on a single, real business problem is one of the most effective ways to gain traction.
You can follow the steps above to build your own plan. If you'd like help identifying your focus, evaluating tools, or facilitating your workshop, Lokion offers a structured, hands-on process designed to help you move forward with clarity.
Want help creating your first AI action plan? Let’s connect. We offer a free 30-minute AI readiness call to help teams find their starting point.
“Lokion's AI Action Plan helped us wrap our heads around how to best use AI in our business. They facilitated a discussion that not only taught us things we didn’t know, but offered a structured way to prioritize what we were interested in pursuing.”
FAQs
Q: What is an AI action plan?
A: An AI action plan is a step-by-step roadmap for how to use artificial intelligence to solve a specific business problem. It typically includes tool selection, piloting, workflow integration, KPIs, and a timeline.
Q: How do I identify a good problem to solve with AI?
A: Look for high-friction processes, repetitive tasks, or areas where your team struggles to scale. Then prioritize based on potential impact and ease of implementation.
Q: Do we need technical experts to get started with AI?
A: Not necessarily. Many effective AI tools are no-code or low-code. The key is starting with a clear problem and involving the right stakeholders from your team.