Case study

A product workshop that became an ongoing AI program

A single product innovation workshop for product managers led to an ongoing engagement covering AI strategy, senior leadership sessions, a standing AI core team, and delivery across customer support, marketing and product.

Started as: One product innovation workshop
Now: Ongoing program across strategy, capability and delivery
Strategy horizon: Two years, with measures attached
Cost measure: Operational cost reduction in tens of percent
Teams created: Internal AI core team plus small AI pods
AI tools: Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio

The situation

HID Global's product managers were being asked what AI meant for their products, without a shared way to answer. The first engagement was a single workshop for product managers on product innovation with AI.

What we did

The engagement started with that workshop and grew to cover the areas below.

Product innovation with AI, for product managers: structured innovation method applied to AI-era product questions, with the participants' own products as the material.
AI strategy: what the organization was trying to change, where AI belonged in that, and the sequence.
Senior leadership sessions, so the strategy had owners at the level where resourcing decisions are made.
Building an AI core team: a small internal group with the mandate and capability to do the work inside HID Global.
Delivery across functions: customer support, marketing (including answer engine optimization), recurring product innovation workshops, and structured use case discovery.
Enablement in Microsoft 365 Copilot for the teams using it in their daily work, and in Copilot Studio for the teams building their own agents.

What changed

The engagement moved from a one-off session to an ongoing engagement with variable monthly involvement, spanning strategy, capability building and delivery. The internal AI core team now does work that would otherwise have needed us.

What the strategy commits to

The two-year AI strategy includes specific measures. It commits to reducing operational costs by tens of percent, to new revenue and net-new customers from AI features and AI-first products, and to standing up small AI pod teams inside the business. The pod teams are up and running. Progress on the strategy is reviewed against those measures.