AI tools are in place. The operational gains aren't.
One procurement or planning workflow, taken from licence to a number finance signs and built inside your Microsoft 365. QA agrees the validation and data-integrity rules before the build starts.
Copilot is on every desk and the licences are paid, yet the quarterly spend review takes as long as it always did and the number finance reads has not moved.
Where the gain gets lost.
A multi-site client's quarterly spend review, before and after the agent:
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Collect and clean the spend data from each site into one file | Analyst, about a week | Agent, hours |
| Classify by category; flag price and consumption changes per site; list the savings to chase | Analyst, days | Agent, same run |
| Review and decide | Procurement and finance, one meeting | The same meeting |
| Elapsed | About two weeks | About two days |
The decision itself did not change. The two weeks went on an analyst building one large spreadsheet, which the agent now builds in hours; the two days left are the time it takes to schedule the review. The number to watch is what the review now surfaces every quarter: price increases per site, and the savings they point to.
Why the tools don't pay back.
01 · The process stayed the same
The licences arrived, the process they were meant to change stayed as it was, and the team went back to the spreadsheet.
Fix One workflow with a named owner and a number.
02 · No baseline
Nobody timed the work before the tool went in, so nobody can show what it saved.
Fix Measure before you switch anything on.
03 · Controls came last
In a regulated plant, anything that touches batch data, supplier qualification or release needs validation and data-integrity rules. If those are designed at the end, QA stops the roll-out.
Fix The controls are designed with the workflow.
We design for the third because it is the one specific to regulated manufacturing.
Two ways to start.
Still choosing where AI would pay?
Our Copilot workshop runs five hours on-site or three virtually, on your team's own work in your own Microsoft 365 tenant, and everyone leaves with a first AI agent. Four procurement teams have taken it since March 2026.
Already deployed, and it isn't paying?
A diagnostic of 2 to 4 weeks on the workflow you meant it for, covering baseline, adoption and controls and ending in a decision, where "stop" is one possible answer.
After either one the path is the same. In the first month the workflow, its owner and its number are agreed with finance. The old route is retired when QA says so, and your team runs the second workflow itself.
Questions we hear about this.
- Will this get through our QA and IT?
- It has to pass both before we call it a result. Agents are built in your Microsoft 365 tenant under your data policies, on the model Microsoft already serves you under your existing agreement. We work in your environment with the access you grant. If a workflow touches GxP data, its validation and data-integrity approach is settled with QA first.
- Do we need new software?
- Usually not. Most of the gain is in workflows your current Microsoft 365 licences already cover. Alterna is our own platform, built for bill-of-materials pricing and alternatives, so we will say plainly when it is the answer and when your existing licences are.
Tell us about the workflow you hoped AI would fix.
Describe what it was meant to do and what it does now. In 15 minutes we'll say whether we have seen the pattern before, and what finding out would take.
Nothing to prepare. If sharing material would help after the call, we sign an NDA first.
The senior person who would do the work gives you a straight answer. Our people →