Germany’s most expensive Excel spreadsheet

It is Tuesday morning, 9:47. Your head of sales (the man you hired because he could sell sand in the Sahara) is sitting in front of his screen typing figures from a PDF into an Excel spreadsheet. For an hour and a half now. He does this every Tuesday. And every Thursday. Sometimes on Fridays too, when the monthly report is due. If you asked him what he does for a living, he would say: sales. If you asked his calendar, you would get a different answer.

And he is not an isolated case. In accounting, someone is reconciling invoices by hand, screen on the left, screen on the right. In purchasing, someone is copying supplier prices from emails into an overview. In customer service, someone is answering the same question for the twentieth time, even though it is also on page three of the FAQ. Good people. Expensive people. Stuck in routine tasks that no human should have to do any more.

This is Germany’s most expensive Excel spreadsheet. Not because of the figures in it. But because of the people who fill it in.

What does process optimisation with AI actually mean, in concrete terms?

When the words “artificial intelligence” come up, many people think of ChatGPT, self-driving cars or robots playing chess. That is entertaining, but it does not help any medium-sized business shorten its lead times. In everyday business, process optimisation with AI means something far less spectacular, and for that very reason more effective.

It means, for example, that your head of sales (yes, the one with the sand in the Sahara) no longer pieces his offers together by hand from three sources, but that an intelligent system independently combines the data from your CRM, the price list and the customer history. In minutes instead of hours. On Tuesdays, he would suddenly have time for real conversations with clients. On Thursdays too. And on Fridays, for once, he could do what is actually in his job description.

It means that incoming invoices in accounting are automatically recognised, reconciled and posted before anyone has even put their coffee down. And it means that your customer service no longer has to answer the same old enquiries personally, because an AI-supported system pre-qualifies the standard cases and only passes the real sticking points on to your employees. The FAQ question from page three? Dealt with before it annoys anyone.

So automating business processes does not mean replacing people. It means freeing people from what they do not enjoy doing anyway. So that they can do what you are actually paying them for. Your head of sales would thank you. If he were not stuck in an Excel spreadsheet right now.

Where the savings potential is greatest

The tasks that burn the most time and money are those where information moves from one system to the next: manually, error-prone, day in, day out. In almost every medium-sized business, sales, purchasing, accounting and customer service are the departments where AI-driven processes have the biggest lever. Not because people work badly there. But because that is where most of the routine tasks arise, the kind a machine does not mind, but a human does.

Error rates fall. Lead times get shorter. And your skilled staff suddenly have time again for what no algorithm can do: maintaining relationships, making decisions, thinking ahead. Or, to put it more prosaically: finally taking a lunch break without a spreadsheet on their lap.

From practice: when a chatbot speaks better Turkish than the purchasing team

A German food wholesaler had a problem that sounds almost comical at first glance. Its purchasing team had to request prices from international suppliers every day: by email, in a foreign language, with changing contacts. That cost hours. Every day the same routine: write the enquiry, send it, wait for the answer, pick out the figures, enter them in the overview, compare, forward. Does the pattern sound familiar? It is basically the same Excel spreadsheet as your head of sales’. Just in Turkish.

The solution was not a new ERP system and not an expensive platform. It was an AI chatbot that took over exactly this task, fully automatically. Every day it sends the price enquiries, conveniently via WhatsApp, in the relevant language, captures the answers, interprets the price data and makes it available in a database, prepared and structured. What used to swallow half the working day of a qualified buyer now runs in the background. The chatbot, by the way, never complains about the time difference between Germany and Turkey. But that is just in passing.

The purchasing team? Now has time to actually buy. To evaluate suppliers. To negotiate terms. In other words, to do what it was hired for. Just as your head of sales should actually be selling instead of typing in figures.

This example shows what process optimisation with AI in medium-sized businesses really means: not rocket science. Not a major project. But a specific problem, a tailored solution and a team that can breathe again.

“Sounds good, but …”: five objections we hear every week

When we talk to managing directors about AI in their business, at some point there is a moment when it goes quiet for a second. Then comes a sentence that usually starts with “but”. That is perfectly fine. Scepticism is not an obstacle; it is the start of a good conversation. And to be honest: anyone who does not raise an eyebrow at “artificial intelligence” probably did not hear the term properly.

“We do not have any AI know-how in-house.”

You do not need it. After all, you did not hire an electrician when you renovated the office. Introducing AI into a business is a job for specialist partners who understand your business processes and bring the technology with them. Your job is to know where things are getting stuck. The rest is taken care of by someone who does this every day.

“That is bound to be expensive.”

It can be. It does not have to be. Especially not when you know that there are state funding programmes that cover up to 80% of the costs. More on that in a moment. But even without funding, a simple comparison is worthwhile: what does it cost you if your head of sales keeps filling in spreadsheets on Tuesdays and Thursdays instead of winning clients? Exactly. The savings potential of AI rarely lies in the technology budget, but in the staff hours that are spent on routine tasks today.

“Our employees are sceptical.”

So would we be. Nobody likes to hear that a machine is going to take over their job. But that is exactly what does not happen. AI takes over the tasks your employees find tedious anyway: typing up, reconciling, forwarding. Experience shows that employee acceptance grows at exactly the moment the relief becomes noticeable. Once Friday afternoon is no longer eaten up by the weekly report, nobody asks whether AI makes sense any more. Instead, they ask why they did not do it sooner.

“Do we have to replace our systems completely?”

No. AI solutions work with your existing system landscape via interfaces. SAP, DATEV, Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft 365: the systems common in medium-sized businesses can be connected without turning your IT infrastructure upside down. It is not about redoing everything. It is about connecting what is already there intelligently. Your systems stay. They just learn to talk to each other.

“Is this even GDPR-compliant?”

Yes. And that is not negotiable either. Serious AI consulting and implementation always means that all solutions are set up in a GDPR-compliant way, with data processing in Europe, transparent processes and clear responsibilities. If someone offers you anything else, you should not trust them. You probably should not entrust them with anything else either.

Up to 80% funding: why the state wants you to introduce AI

There are moments when, for once, bureaucracy is on your side. INQA funding is one of those moments. INQA stands for “Initiative Neue Qualität der Arbeit” (New Quality of Work initiative) and is a funding programme of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. The idea behind it: medium-sized businesses should not be left behind in digitalisation, and therefore receive financial support when they modernise their business processes with professional guidance.

In concrete terms, this means that up to 80% of consulting and implementation costs can be funded. Funding for AI that you do not have to repay as a loan, but receive as a grant. No small print that eats up the benefit again. The prerequisite is that you work with an INQA-authorised partner. (Yes, Werkdigital is one. But you have probably guessed that already.)

The application process sounds more complicated than it is. An experienced partner knows the forms, the deadlines and the levers, and takes the paperwork off your hands so that you can concentrate on your business. Your head of sales has enough paperwork already, after all.

How to get started: three steps, no risk

If you have read this far, you may be asking yourself: all well and good, but where do I start? The answer is simpler than you think. Introducing AI into your business does not begin with a major project, an IT overhaul or a strategy paper that matures in a drawer for three months. It begins with a conversation.

Step 1: brief analysis

In a short meeting, experts talk to you about your current processes: where are the biggest time wasters, where are the most obvious levers? Not a sales pitch, but an honest review. The moment, so to speak, when someone looks over your head of sales’ shoulder and says: “That does not have to be this way.”

Step 2: strategy meeting

Based on the analysis, a concrete proposal is drawn up: which processes can be automated? Which funding is an option? What is the realistic timeframe?

Step 3: implementation

Not a pilot project that fizzles out. But a solution that is integrated into your existing system landscape and takes the load off your team from day one.

Medium-sized businesses do not have a technology problem. They have a time problem.

Digitalisation in medium-sized businesses rarely fails for lack of will. It fails because everyday life leaves no gap to think about everyday life. That is exactly why your best people are still sitting in front of Germany’s most expensive Excel spreadsheet. On Tuesdays. On Thursdays. Sometimes on Fridays too.

For more than 15 years, Werkdigital has been working with medium-sized businesses to change exactly that. With a permanently employed team of experts in Germany, INQA authorisation and more than 327 completed projects, for businesses that no longer want to use their skilled staff as photocopiers.

Nor, by the way, does your head of sales.