Autonomous Business Partners

AI-powered digital coworkers for every business function

Last year, I laid out my idea for the Company 2.0, the AI-first company. I still believe it will happen, but it’s likely further away than I thought last year. However, one transformative application of AI I see happening in the coming years will be Autonomous Business Partners for different business functions. Imagine every department in a company having its own AI-powered work partner, seamlessly integrated and handling a bulk of daily operations.

An early example of this type of company is Tezi, an autonomous AI recruiting partner for engineering leaders. Tezi manages end-to-end requirements for hiring managers, including sourcing, scheduling, screening, and reporting. The power of Tezi lies in its integration into existing workflows and tools, performing tasks where users already work, rather than being yet another product with a different workflow. 

What Tezi does for engineering recruiting, I believe we’ll see replicated across various business functions in the upcoming years.

The Autonomous Business Partner

The Autonomous Business Partner are AI agents that act as digital coworkers, seamlessly managing complex, labor-intensive processes such as accounting, auditing, controlling, operations planning, or logistics. They understand the context, processes, and SOPs of your organization and have access to all relevant knowledge.

These agents are autonomous and proactive, making decisions and pushing work forward without waiting for user instructions. However, they can interact with users, take feedback, and change direction if needed. It will feel like you are interacting with a remote colleague.

They will be capable of executing 80% of the work. For the remaining 20%, they prepare all relevant information to humans, enabling them to quickly solve an issue and make faster and better informed decisions. This is more than a co-pilot; it’s a digital coworker, working alongside your team and embedded in the tools you use, not tied to one specific tool.

Autonomous Business Partners will increase the speed and efficiency of organizations. By automating routine and complex tasks, these partners will drastically accelerate business processes. They will also free teams from the burden of repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on strategy, creativity, and good decision-making. 

I don’t believe this will be a one-size-fits-all. Context and domain knowledge are essential here, and therefore I believe we will see specialized autonomous business partners for different business verticals instead of one horizontal agent. 

Are you working on something like this? Get in touch; I’m looking to invest 100-500k per company.

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