By Artem Korsakov ·
AI for business is often discussed as a general desire to "add AI." For a project, it must be turned into an observable action: parsing an email, finding an instruction, or preparing a document draft. This creates the opportunity to evaluate the result and limit the first version.
Define the Result the Employee Needs
Instead of a general "sales department assistant," describe one operation. For example: the employee inserts the text of an inquiry, receives the request fields and a list of questions for clarification, checks them, and transfers confirmed information to the operational system.
Specify what remains under human control. The employee confirms conditions, corrects ambiguous data, and makes the decision to send. The pilot may not have CRM integration: first, it is important to check if data extraction itself helps.
Separately list actions not assigned to the assistant. This sets the boundaries of the current validation; it does not hinder product development.
Pilot Implementation: What Examples to Prepare
You need examples reflecting routine work and information on what result is considered correct. The selection should include different phrasings, omissions, long messages, and out-of-topic questions.
Leave part of the examples for validation after tuning. Do not assess quality solely on tasks under which instructions have already been selected.
Example set for parsing inquiries:
- a short request with complete data;
- several products or services in one message;
- changes to terms in correspondence;
- a letter without mandatory information;
- an inquiry that must be fully transferred to a human.
The use of real data is agreed upon with the owners and the rules of the chosen service. For initial validation, anonymized examples can be prepared.
Подпись: Illustrative example. The pilot log captures everything: corrected fields, omissions, and verification time. Decisions are made based on these records.
Agree on Criteria Before Starting
Define exactly what is being measured: the accuracy of individual fields, the share of acceptable drafts, verification time, and the number of errors the employee did not notice immediately.
There is no single threshold for all tasks. An error in a product name and an error in the order amount have different consequences. If an action changes money, access rights, or company obligations, requirements and confirmation methods must be stricter than for a standard text hint.
Tie the pilot duration to the scope of work and availability of examples. Promising a launch in a fixed number of days before data analysis is incorrect.
Account for All Work After the Model's Response
The employee opens the result, checks it, edits it, and saves it. Sometimes they repeat the request. All these actions are part of time costs.
Separately account for model usage, storage, connections, and maintenance. Preparing a small demonstration may be fast, but operational implementation additionally requires access control, failure handling, and team instructions.
Major AI platforms offer tools for retrieval and drafting. Their presence reduces the need to write separate components, but does not confirm the quality of your specific scenario.
How to Conduct a Comparison on One Task
For the inquiry parsing pilot, collect a validation set separately from the tuning examples. First, the manager processes emails in the usual way, then checks drafts from the assistant on comparable cases. When reusing the same email, account for the memory effect: the person may work faster simply because they have already seen the answer.
Record the time for the entire action, corrected fields, omissions, and errors noticed later. One good answer in a demonstration does not show what will happen with a long chain and multiple orders. Such cases must be included in the validation intentionally.
The approach to AI evaluation and risk management is described in the NIST AI RMF Playbook. The NIST AI RMF is a voluntary framework. Define acceptance criteria for your specific task and risks; this article is not a certification or compliance checklist.
What Decision to Make Based on Results
Record three possible outcomes before starting. Continue if drafts help and critical errors are detected during verification. Refine the scenario if benefit exists only for certain types of emails. Stop if total verification and correction take more time or data cannot be safely used in the chosen manner.
For example, the assistant parses text requests well but confuses line items in scanned tables. A reasonable pilot result: the text flow is prepared for implementation, scans remain with the manager. In this case, it is not possible to claim that all incoming mail is automated.
Подпись: Illustrative example. Outcomes and their conditions are recorded before the pilot starts to avoid forcing the decision to fit the result.
The pilot report must contain the validation set in the agreed form, anonymised where required, evaluation rules, identified limitations, and the cost of the next stage. This way, the owner purchases a clear continuation of work and can repeat the validation after changing the model. The quality threshold is set according to the consequences of errors for a specific business.
Next Step After Validation
Before connecting to operational data, agree on the process owner, access rights, manual routing in case of failure, and support conditions. These tasks are evaluated based on pilot results: now the types of documents, share of exceptions, and necessary employee actions are known.
In trike_dev, you can discuss one process and evaluate the pilot. To start, look at the company materials assistant and data transfer. The general logic of validating a future product is described in the article on prototype before development.
Related reading: Automation Efficiency: How to Check the Implementation Result; Automation Budget: How to Select a Project and Not Overpay.
Частые вопросы ### Does the pilot necessarily work with real clients?
No. It can be conducted on agreed examples or in a hint mode for the employee. Transition to actions with clients is made by a separate decision.
What happens after successful validation?
Operational connections, access rights, support, and control rules are agreed upon. They are not included in the initial test; they are evaluated separately.