Why Customer Workflows Are Becoming the Moat in the AI Era
AI startups are creating strategic value by embedding in customer workflows, offering insights for founders and investors.
Intelligence analysis by Qwen 2.5 (3B)
AI startups are leveraging customer workflows to create strategic value, offering insights for founders and investors.
Imagine you have an AI helper that can answer questions and do tasks. If the helper is used in your company's everyday work, it's like having a helper that knows all the rules and can solve problems. Other helpers might not be as useful because they're just for fun or testing. So, having a helper that knows your company's rules and can solve problems is like having a really strong helper that can stay and help you all the time.
Analysis
Workflow Access Creates Strategic Value
Schneider Electric's acquisition of PTC and Synopsys's partnership with OpenAI illustrate the strategic value of owning the environment in which AI performs useful work. Companies already embedded in complex industries bring customer relationships, domain expertise, and trusted processes that AI developers need to commercialize their technology.
Building a Position Inside a Specific Workflow
Founders should build a position inside a specific customer workflow. For example, ElevenLabs, which handles over 15 million conversations weekly, can strengthen retention and create opportunities to serve additional workflows.
Integrating Workflow Automation
ServiceNow's acquisition of Moveworks combines AI assistant and enterprise search technology with established workflow automation. This creates a clear corporate development agenda to identify customer workflows the company wants to enter, understand the barriers, and assess whether an acquisition or partnership can accelerate entry.
Acquiring Workflow Access
Investors should examine how much recurring work flows through the platform, which processes rely on it, and what switching would actually require. Companies can acquire their way into workflows by connecting employee requests directly to the systems and processes that resolve them across IT, HR, and other functions.
Key points
- AI startups are leveraging customer workflows to create strategic value
- Founders should build a position inside a specific customer workflow
- Established businesses can leverage existing workflow access to gain bargaining power
- Investors should examine how much recurring work flows through the platform
- Companies can acquire their way into workflows by connecting employee requests directly to the systems and processes that resolve them
As AI capabilities improve, companies can acquire the right position inside customer operations to accelerate growth and create durable value.
If companies fail to integrate AI into their workflows, they might miss out on the strategic value that comes from having AI embedded in their core processes.
