Congratulations. You lifted. You shifted. You outsourced your “as-is” operation faster than anyone could say “transformation.”
And now your service provider is proudly running the same broken processes, just in a cheaper time zone. You’ve digitized your inefficiency, turned your bureaucracy into a managed service, and signed a multi-year contract that’s harder to exit than a bad marriage. The only thing that really changed is the currency your where your problems are billed.
Welcome to the world of the lift and shift that still stinks.
It still smells like before: Most enterprises outsource broken processes and call it transformation
Most enterprises fall into the same trap. They outsource too early, too broadly, and too hopefully. The logic sounds fine: “Let’s get some quick labor savings and then transform later.”
The problem is that later never comes, while the pace of change has never been faster.
Now you’re three years into your five-year deal and you’ve got a low-cost service provider managing your old ways of working, complete with manual approvals, 23-step handoffs, meager 3% annual efficiency improvements, and weekly Excel wars. If your KPI dashboard looks cleaner, that’s only because you’ve spent more on Power BI.
But here’s the good news: AI might finally be the disinfectant we’ve been waiting for.
AI can redesign your processes in hours, not governance cycles
AI isn’t going to fix lazy governance or bad contracts, but it can finally give you the x-ray vision to see what’s broken and the tools to redesign it at speed.
Think about it:
- GenAI can read and interpret 300-page outsourcing contracts in seconds, flagging risk and ambiguity that used to take a legal team a week to find.
- Agentic systems can orchestrate workflows across service providers, eliminate redundant handoffs, and trigger actions automatically instead of sending another email to “check status.”
- Predictive analytics can finally expose the real process bottlenecks, the hidden exceptions, and the false efficiency metrics that your lift-and-shift hid behind.
- AI can scan the services and technology marketplace to identify the latest innovations and propose where you can integrate them for the best results.
You don’t need to “optimize” a bad process anymore… You can teach AI to redesign it.
AI exposes the failures your service provider and operations teams have been hiding
The days of hiding behind dashboards and governance calls are over. Here’s how leaders are using AI to turn their inherited outsourcing mess into intelligent operations:
- Recode broken workflows. Use AI to map every step, identify dead loops, and rebuild from the outcome backward.
- Automate exception handling. Train AI agents to resolve most of the “manual review” tasks that clog your SLAs.
- Apply sentiment and pattern analytics. Mine your meeting transcripts and governance documents to identify cultural or behavioral blockers that data alone can’t show.
- Digitally audit service provider performance. AI can continuously scan SLA and contract compliance instead of waiting for quarterly review meetings that achieve nothing.
- Drive innovation into your relationship. Compare your processes and technology to the latest market capabilities and ask AI to build a pipeline of major initiatives you can undertake.
- Build your own GovernanceGPT. Use AI to review team outputs in advance of meetings, challenge the lack of improvement and inertia, and propose solutions.
The old service provider account manager model of stabilize, report, repeat is over. The future belongs to AI-enabled orchestration that connects humans, bots, and platforms into a single operational rhythm.
Five rules to de-stink your operating model
The excuses are gone. AI now gives you a live heartbeat of performance, while most of your competitors are still running operations by looking in the rearview mirror. If you cannot measure in real time, cannot update contracts to match actual outcomes, and cannot remove handoffs that slow everything down, your operating model is legacy, and AI will expose it for what it is.
Here are five rules separating leaders from casualties in the post-stink era:
1. If you can’t measure it in real time, it’s not transformation
Transformation is a real time sport. If you wait for quarterly KPIs, you are already behind. AI can give you the live signals that show what is working and what is not, but you need to wire your processes so the data can actually flow.
Example… A global consumer goods firm uses AI-driven dashboards tracking supply chain velocity across 40 markets in real time. Instead of waiting for monthly reports, leaders see SKU-level delivery delays within hours and redirect logistics accordingly. That’s transformation that breathes, not transformation by PowerPoint.
Action… Equip your sales, support, and supply chain teams with real-time visibility. If your data doesn’t show live performance, it’s just noise pretending to be insight.
2. Stop managing service providers and start managing outcomes
Governance needs a redesign for the AI-First era. Enterprises waste endless time policing SLAs instead of measuring business impact. AI doesn’t care who does the work, only that it gets done better and faster. The future is co-managed outcomes, not supplier babysitting.
Example… A North American bank replaced legacy BPO scorecards with AI-driven outcome contracts. Instead of tracking FTEs and ticket closure times, it measures resolution quality and customer retention using real-time sentiment analytics. The provider’s bonus or penalty adjusts automatically each month based on outcomes, not headcount.
Action… Shift governance from “who does what” to “what got done.” Let AI be the referee and build trust through transparency, not meetings.
3. Kill the handoffs before they kill your efficiency
Intelligent automation isn’t about faster handoffs. It’s about removing them altogether. Every process handoff creates latency, risk, and miscommunication. AI agents and automation platforms now allow work to flow seamlessly end-to-end. In fact, you can legitimately claim agentic AI is the distant offspring of RPA, where the technology can be designed by business experts and actually scales with the business.
Example… A global insurer rebuilt its claims process so GenAI reads documents, extracts details, verifies policy data, and triggers payments without human relay points. Claim cycle times fell 70%, and accuracy improved because there were fewer handoffs, not faster ones.
Action… Map your top 10 workflows and identify every touchpoint adding no value. Then challenge your AI team to eliminate at least half within 90 days.
4. Use AI to rewrite the contract you wish you’d signed
Traditional contracts freeze assumptions in time. AI lets you model new pricing and gain-sharing scenarios using real performance data. Contracts can now be living documents that update as outcomes evolve.
Example… A European telecom provider built a dynamic pricing model for its transformation partner. AI recalculates cost and savings every quarter based on network uptime, customer churn, and automation efficiency. Both sides log into the same dashboard and co-manage profit impact. No more quarterly disputes, only shared accountability.
Action… Use generative contract platforms to simulate what-if scenarios before renewal. Build data feeds into contract terms so pricing and rewards evolve with performance, not politics.
5. Holy cows still make great burgers
Every company has legacy processes that everyone promised to “fix later.” Later is now. AI is the grill that can finally cook what’s been sitting in the fridge for a decade.
Example… A large retailer used GenAI to automate its 20-year-old product taxonomy cleanup project. What was once a “too complex” manual task got done in six weeks, unlocking more accurate demand forecasting and merchandising.
Action… List every “too hard” process in your organization. Then assign each one an AI experiment owner. The sacred cows protected by politics and inertia are now your juiciest efficiency wins.
Bottom line: The post-stink era is here… if your operating model still smells like legacy, AI won’t perfume it, it’ll expose it.
Transformation now means measuring, automating, and re-contracting in real time. Firms that embrace these five rules will lead the next decade of enterprise reinvention. Those that don’t will spend it explaining to boards why their competitors moved faster while they were still waiting for quarterly reports to tell them what already happened.
Posted in : Agentic AI, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Buyers' Sourcing Best Practices, Change Management, Digital OneOffice, IT Outsourcing / IT Services
