Beyond the Hype: How AI Delivers Real Workflow Efficiency

AI has captured the imagination of nearly every industry, promising to reshape how work gets done. From automating routine tasks to delivering real-time insights, the potential is enormous. Yet with so much noise in the market, it can be hard to distinguish what’s truly transformative from what’s merely trend-chasing.

At BuildGroup, we invest in AI-enabled workflow companies that go beyond the hype. These are companies that integrate AI directly into business processes to solve real operational bottlenecks, turning data into insights, streamlining decision-making, and increasing efficiency across the board. For example:

• Squirro, a current BuildGroup portfolio company, transforms unstructured enterprise data into contextual insights, helping teams make faster, more informed decisions.
• Amelia, a former BuildGroup portfolio company acquired by SoundHound¹  (NASDAQ:SOUN), delivers human-like customer support through conversational AI, reducing service costs and improving user satisfaction.
• Flowspace, a current BuildGroup portfolio company, leverages AI to optimize supply chain logistics, ensuring inventory is always in the right place at the right time.

As BuildGroup Co-Founder & CEO Jim Curry notes, “If you own the workflow, you own really valuable data. And AI is nothing without data.”

So where exactly is AI living up to its promise, and what sets effective implementations apart?

AI’s Impact on Workflow Efficiency: What Works and What Doesn’t

AI has already demonstrated real-world value across industries. But success comes from choosing the right applications. The most impactful use cases tend to share three qualities:

• They operate in data-rich environments
• They automate high-volume, repetitive tasks
• They augment rather than replace human decision-making

Below, we explore where AI is driving measurable efficiency and where it still falls short.
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1. Automating Repetitive, High-Volume Tasks

AI shines in automating manual, time-consuming processes that bog down teams and drain productivity.

• UiPath and Intelligent Process Automation: UiPath builds robotic process automation tools that mimic human actions in software systems. From data entry to invoice processing, UiPath’s bots handle thousands of repetitive tasks across departments, freeing up staff and improving accuracy.
• Ironclad and AI Contract Management: Legal teams use Ironclad to automate contract workflows. Its AI identifies key clauses, highlights risks, and accelerates reviews, reducing the need for manual parsing of dense legal documents.
• Fiix and Predictive Maintenance for Industry: Fiix, a former BuildGroup portfolio company that has been fully exited, equips manufacturers with AI tools to shift from reactive to predictive maintenance. By analyzing equipment data and usage trends, Fiix forecasts failures before they happen, minimizing downtime and maximizing productivity.
• Casetext and AI-Accelerated Legal Research: Casetext, a former BuildGroup portfolio company that has been fully exited, enables lawyers to conduct complex legal research in seconds using natural language queries. Its AI understands context and relevance, reducing hours of case review into minutes and supporting higher-quality legal arguments.  
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2. Enhancing Decision-Making with AI-Powered Insights

AI dramatically improves decision-making by revealing insights locked inside massive datasets.

• Datadog and Intelligent Monitoring: In cloud-native environments, downtime is costly. Datadog uses machine learning to monitor infrastructure in real time, flagging anomalies and forecasting outages before they occur. This proactive insight enables teams to take action fast and avoid disruptions.
• Gong and Revenue Intelligence: Sales leaders use Gong to analyze every customer interaction, like calls, emails, meetings, to uncover what really drives conversions. Gong’s AI reveals patterns in tone, timing, and content that help reps replicate successful deals and avoid common pitfalls.
• Squirro and Decision Intelligence: Squirro, a current BuildGroup portfolio company, goes beyond dashboards. It ingests and analyzes vast volumes of unstructured data: emails, documents, CRM notes, and surfaces the most relevant insights at the right moment. This empowers organizations to act with clarity in fast-moving, information-rich environments.

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3. Optimizing Customer Experience with AI-Driven Personalization

Customers expect more: faster answers, tailored recommendations, and seamless service. AI makes that possible. As Jim Curry puts it, “With AI, you're trying to lower the marginal cost of growth, but also bend the curve of growth.” In other words, the best implementations don’t just save time, they unlock new operating models.

• Drift and Conversational Sales AI: Drift’s chatbots are deployed on B2B websites to instantly engage visitors, qualify them through dynamic questioning, and book meetings with sales reps. This automation shortens response times and filters out low-intent traffic. Drift’s deep focus on buyer engagement led to its 2024 acquisition by Salesloft to unify sales and marketing workflows across the revenue funnel.
• Typeface and Generative Marketing Content: Typeface empowers content and brand teams to rapidly create high-quality, on-brand marketing assets. Its AI adapts messaging, visuals, and tone to specific audiences, enabling scale without sacrificing personalization or quality.
• Amelia and Conversational AI for Service: Amelia, a BuildGroup portfolio company acquired by SoundHound¹ (NASDAQ: SOUN), provides AI agents that converse naturally and contextually with users. Unlike basic chatbots, Amelia understands complex requests, remembers past interactions, and improves with each conversation, delivering white-glove service at scale.
• Vidmob and Creative Intelligence: Vidmob, a current BuildGroup portfolio company, analyzes thousands of creative elements across video ads to understand what drives engagement. Its AI gives marketers real-time feedback on how to edit and optimize creative assets, bridging the gap between data and storytelling.
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4. Improving Operational Efficiency Through Predictive AI

Forecasting is one of AI’s most valuable contributions, helping businesses act before problems arise.

• Samsara and Predictive Fleet Management: Samsara enables logistics operators to monitor fleet health, driver behavior, and routing in real time. Its AI identifies risks before they lead to breakdowns or delays, cutting costs and improving service levels.
• Celonis and Intelligent Process Mining: Celonis maps out every process inside a company: order fulfillment, procurement, finance, and uncovers hidden inefficiencies. Its recommendations help enterprises optimize workflows and remove friction, improving execution at scale.
• Flowspace and AI-Optimized Fulfillment: Flowspace, a current BuildGroup portfolio company, uses AI to forecast demand, route inventory, and manage distributed warehousing. This predictive approach allows brands to meet customer expectations while lowering logistics costs and boosting fulfillment speed.

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Where AI Falls Short

Despite its promise, AI can fail to deliver when it's misapplied. Common pitfalls include:

• Low-Quality Data: AI systems are only as good as the data they learn from. Fragmented or inconsistent inputs lead to poor predictions and unreliable insights.
• Overengineering Simple Tasks: Not every process needs AI. Some problems are best solved with traditional automation or better workflow design.
• Lack of Seamless Integration: AI tools must fit into existing systems and user behaviors. If adoption creates friction or requires retraining, the result is often lost productivity instead of gains.

A widely cited example is IBM Watson’s early attempt to transform oncology. While the vision was bold, the platform struggled with inconsistent data and integration challenges, ultimately falling short of expectations in clinical use.
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How to Move Beyond the AI Hype

Step one: Resist the urge to slap "AI-powered" onto your pitch deck unless you can actually explain what it does.

To achieve real results, companies must approach AI adoption strategically:

• Start with the right use cases: Focus on areas where AI can reduce manual work, improve accuracy, or speed up decisions.
• Ensure data readiness: Clean, structured, and relevant data is the foundation of any AI success.
• Prioritize ROI: Evaluate AI initiatives by the value they deliver, not their technical novelty.
• Design for integration: The best AI products blend into existing workflows and augment human capabilities.
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The Future of AI-Enabled Workflow Efficiency

AI is not a magic wand, but a powerful tool. The companies that will win in the AI era aren’t those chasing headlines; they’re the ones solving real problems with clear ROI, thoughtful implementation, and a commitment to continuous improvement.

At BuildGroup, we back data-rich, operationally-focused companies that take a disciplined approach to AI. If you're building tools that embed intelligence into everyday workflows, we’d love to hear from you. We’re always looking to partner with builders who turn technical sophistication into practical value.

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¹ BuildGroup currently has escrow shares and potential earnout shares in SoundHound

*BuildGroup invested in and exited Fiix and Casetext and currently invests in Vidmob, Squirro, Flowspace and SoundHound (NASDAQ:SOUN). The inclusion of these companies in this piece is solely for illustrative purposes regarding our investment strategy.

Disclosure: The information in this blog post is provided in good faith without any warranty. It does not constitute investment advice, recommendation, or an offer of any services or products of BuildGroup Management and it is not intended to provide a sufficient basis on which to make an investment decision. This document is provided for educational purposes only. Discussions of current or former BuildGroup portfolio companies are intended for educational and discussion purposes only. Any portfolio company discussed has been selected based on objective, non-performance based criteria.‍

‍This content does not constitute or form part of an offer of any investment advisory services of BuildGroup Management, LLC, nor does it constitute or form part of an offer to issue or sell, or of a solicitation of an offer to subscribe or buy, any securities or other financial instruments, nor does it constitute a financial promotion, investment advice or an inducement or incitement to participate in any product, offering or investment.

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