AI email workflow pilot for a communications executive
Built and tuned an AI agent for an executive's deal-email workflow: long-thread search, synthesis, and drill-back to source emails. The user reports 60 to 90 minutes saved on a typical day.
Challenge
A senior executive's day ran through deal email: long threads, buried commitments, and the daily archaeology of finding who said what and when. The company wanted a first AI win that was real, measurable, and built on tools they already paid for, not another platform purchase that stalls at the demo stage.
Approach
We scoped the pilot to that one workflow and built it on the Copilot license the company already had: an agent tuned for long-thread search and synthesis that always drills back to the source emails, plus a set of reusable prompt patterns for the recurring asks. We built it with the actual user, tuned it against live traffic instead of canned demos, and closed the pilot out honestly: what worked, where the tool's limits are, and what the next layer (file-connected AI) should look like.
Result
- 60-90 min reported saved on a typical day
- 260-390 hrs per year at that pace
- 0 new tools purchased
Details
Most AI pilots die one of two deaths: they get scoped so wide nothing ships, or they demo well and never touch real work. This one was scoped to a single person’s single most expensive workflow, which is exactly why it stuck.
The closeout matters as much as the build. The pilot ended with a written read on what the agent does well, where it falls short, and what the next investment should be, so the company can expand from evidence instead of enthusiasm. That is the shape of every good first AI project: small, real, measured, and honest about its own limits.