Ever since Generative AI was hyped last year, I’ve been exploring the ways we could use it within a business environment to make a tangible impact—measurable in terms of time and cost savings. Then, educate the masses, (the peasants like you and me, not the AI power users), without slapping jargon on their faces.
So, I took a little detour from my usual writing style and experimented with a new narrative style to craft this post.
In this post, we will explore the diverse use cases of Generative AI in the business world, focusing on its impact on a fictitious cat food company, MeowMunch. Join us as we delve into the world of MeowMunch and discover how they are harnessing the power of Generative AI to drive innovation, efficiency, and success.
Before we dive in, let me thank my good friend Mark Needham (aka The RAG Lord in AI circles) for generating cool imagery and helping me understand the overall GenAI landscape.
MeowMunch - A data-driven cat food company
Welcome to MeowMunch, where passion for feline nutrition meets the power of data-driven innovation. As a leading cat food company, MeowMunch has carved a purrfect niche in the competitive pet food market by harnessing the transformative potential of data and Generative AI.
MeowMunch leverages cutting-edge data analytics and AI technologies to craft tantalizing recipes that keep kitties coming back for more. From predictive analytics guiding product development to personalized customer experiences powered by AI, MeowMunch stands at the forefront of the industry, setting the standard for excellence in cat nutrition. With every whisker-licking bite, MeowMunch reaffirms its dedication to feline well-being while embracing the future of pet food through data-driven decision-making and innovation.
Even though the last paragraph is AI-generated, let's explore how MeowMunch uses Generative AI technologies to work smarter, not harder, to save time and costs, and to make a significant impact in the market.
Meet Agatha - The lady who knows it all
The best thing that happened to MeowMunchers was that they got a chatbot, which they call Agatha.
Agatha is a Large Language Model (LLM) providing a conversational interface to the company’s internal knowledge base, designed to be every MeowMuncher's go-to source for company knowledge and insights.
Agatha is the brainchild of Peter, the company's visionary chief data scientist, and proud cat parent to a feline namesake, Agatha is more than just an AI; she's a virtual repository of MeowMunch's collective wisdom.
Powered by RAG, Agatha digests a myriad of internal documents, from memos and policies to reports and manuals, distilling them into easily accessible nuggets of information. Through streaming data technology, Agatha stays perpetually updated, seamlessly incorporating changes from internal systems to ensure her knowledge remains current and relevant.
With Agatha at their fingertips, MeowMunchers can effortlessly pose questions in plain English, tapping into a treasure trove of insights to enhance their productivity and decision-making prowess.
If you are super deep into AI, this is how Agatha works under the hood.
How Agatha is enabling MeowMunchers?
Ever since Agatha became operational, she has been busy answering employee questions from every department.
For example, Lisa from the sales department wasn't sure about the meal expenses she could claim while traveling, so she decided to ask Agatha.
"Hey Agatha, could you please provide me with the approved expense amount for meals at MeowMunch? I need to ensure I'm adhering to company policy. Thank you!”
Rahul from engineering wasn’t sure about how many spaces should be used while coding, so he got it clarified from Agatha.
"Hello Agatha, I'm curious about the coding style guidelines regarding spacing in our codebase. Could you please provide clarity on how many spaces we should use for indentation and other spacing conventions? Thank you!”
Later on, Agatha was upgraded to perform certain business tasks based on a prompt. Agatha uses plugins provided by external software vendors to extend her functionality to integrate with external APIs, databases, or specialized tools, making task automation possible.
For example:
Jeff, the VP of Sales orders Agatha to book his flights and hotels for his upcoming business trip to London.
Kayla, the data analyst orders Agatha to extract leads from Salesforce, format them, and have them published to the marketing Slack channel.
These smart automations resulted in saving a lot of time for MeowMunchers eliminating the need for doing repetitive and time-consuming operations.
Apart from that, many departments started using Agatha for their specific needs. Let me walk you through each department while zooming into how they leverage Agatha to make their lives easier.
Product - Listen to customers better
The product folks at MeowMunch listen like devoted cat whisperers. Through sentiment analysis, they decipher customer feedback and tweak their offerings accordingly.
Agatha excels in natural language understanding, enabling the team to interpret and categorize customer feedback more efficiently. The team now can identify key themes, sentiment patterns, and emerging trends in customer feedback, helping them tweak existing products as well as experiment with new cat food recipes.
Mike, the Product Marketing Manager, enlists Agatha's assistance to understand the product reviews on the company website and social media.
"Hey Agatha, understand the following review and produce what's good, what's bad, and what needs to be improved in bulleted format."
"After transitioning my discerning kitty to MeowMunch Premium Cat Food, I've witnessed remarkable improvements in her overall health and coat condition. The diverse range of flavors keeps her eagerly anticipating mealtime, and the emphasis on real meat as the primary protein source reassures me of the food's quality and nutritional value. However, I've encountered challenges in finding certain flavors at local stores, highlighting the need for expanded distribution channels. Additionally, while the functional packaging serves its purpose, a more visually appealing design could enhance the brand's shelf presence. Clearer labeling regarding portion sizes and feeding guidelines would also benefit new pet owners navigating the brand. Despite these minor drawbacks, MeowMunch has undoubtedly earned my trust as a reliable and nutritious option for feline diets."
Marketing - Unlimited creativity potential
MeowMunch's marketing isn't just about flashy ads; it's about telling stories that resonate with cat lovers. The marketing department leverages Agatha to generate new pieces of original content, such as blogs, social media posts, and webpage copy.
Ben, the lead designer depends on Agatha to create realistic and visually appealing images for ad campaigns, branding, and more. Because they sensed MeowMunch needed a brand refresh from recent customer reviews.
Agatha generated the following set of logos for the upcoming branch refresh.
Jenny, the chief editor, generates outlines for blogs that are specially crafted for cat lovers.
"Hello Agatha, I'm working on an article about healthy diets for cats.
Could you please help me generate an outline for the article? I'm particularly interested in covering topics such as nutritional requirements, types of cat food, homemade vs. commercial diets, and common dietary issues."
Sales - Make every conversation personal
The sales team at MeowMunch connects with customers on a personal level. That isn't just about transactions; it's about building relationships.
All made possible by Agatha by generating personalized emails and messages based on a prospect’s profile and behavior, improving response rates.
Melanie, an account executive, uses Agatha to generate an apology email to be sent to a retail customer who recently had a delayed product shipment from MeowMunch.
"Hey Agatha, write an apology email from Melanie, the Account Executive, to the customer "John Doe" who provided negative feedback on the delayed shipment we dispatched to FelineCorp"
Apart from that, salesfolks use Agatha to summarize call transcripts, meeting transcripts, and other relevant content.
Data Analytics - Make informed decisions
Integrating Agatha into their workflow has empowered MeowMunch's data analytics team to gain deeper insights from textual data and make more informed decisions.
Agatha helps the team to analyze data using plain English, which wasn’t possible a few years ago.
Rekha, a business analyst, is shifting from spreadsheet analysis to data-driven analysis. She aims to use SQL for effectively fetching specific data points.
She will get Agatha to generate SQL queries for her analysis.
Hey Agatha,
MeowMunch has a database with a table named sales_master containing sales records.
The table has the following columns:
- date (YYYY-MM-DD)
- product_id
- price
- units_sold
Can you generate SQL queries for the following:
- Identify the top 5 best selling products by total sales for the year 2023
- Calculate the monthly average sales for the year 2023
Software Engineering - Build quality software with less effort
MeowMunch owns several software systems, including a website, mobile app, and several back office systems that help run the daily business operations. They are proudly built and managed by an in-house software engineering team.
They heavily depend on Agatha to automate things and save time. For example, Agatha assists in generating code snippets, templates, and even entire modules based on high-level specifications provided by developers. Moreover, the engineering team uses Agatha to automate repetitive coding tasks, such as security scans, API integration, and database schema creation, freeing up time for more creative and complex development tasks.
Josh, a newly joined engineer, asks Agatha to explain a code snippet that he finds hard to understand.
Sarah is a software developer at MeowMunch, tasked with translating a code snippet written in Python to its equivalent in JavaScript. Sarah needs to translate this function to JavaScript for integration into MeowMunch's web application.
Wrap up
Well, the goal of this post is not to glorify Generative AI or promote it as a silver bullet for all your business problems.
By reading through the MeowMunch analogy, I hope you understand the creative potential of Generative AI in a typical business setting. The post just discussed only a handful of tasks that AI could perform. It all depends on your need and how accurately you can come up with a prompt.
Whether we like it or not, LLMs like Agatha are becoming essential components in organizational data infrastructure, just as databases, caches, data warehouses, etc. Technologies like RAG enable controlled feeding of these LLMs with corporate data.
Don’t resist the AI movement, try to get it working for you to make lives easier.