Ongoing Analysis

Some questions about your work have an answer that keeps changing. “Which jobs keep running over on materials?” has a different answer next month than it does today. An Ongoing Analysis is the AI Strategist taking one of those questions and staying on it: it digs into the records of one process, works out the answer, and comes back on a schedule with what has changed.

What it does

Each time it runs, the Strategist:

• Works on your question, in your words. It looks through the records of the process you named, counting, totaling and comparing as your question needs, and opening individual records where that helps.
• Keeps one current answer. You get a single, up-to-date answer to your question, not a pile of old ones. Each run replaces the last.
• Calls out up to five specific points. When something deserves your attention on its own (one job far over budget, one supplier behind on every order), it raises it separately, so it can be acted on and closed out. A point it no longer stands behind is retired on the next run.
• Backs every figure with your records. Every number it gives you comes from a lookup it actually made. A point it cannot back up is dropped, never guessed.
• Only reads. It never changes a record, starts a process, or contacts anyone while it works.

Its answer and the points it raises show up with the rest of the Strategist’s findings, and the ones that matter make it into your AI Daily Briefing.

Start one

1. In a strategy session, ask the Strategist your question about a process. It answers right away from your records.
2. If the answer will keep changing, it offers to keep working on it. You can also ask outright: “keep an eye on this for me every week.”
3. It reads your question back to you, says which process it will look at, and tells you how often it will run. Sharpen the question at this point if you want to. It works on exactly the words you agree on.
4. Say yes. It makes its first pass the same day.

The Strategist also starts one on its own when one of your strategic initiatives says you keep records in order to learn something from them. It tells you the question it is working on and how often it will run, and you can reword the question or stop it by asking. It starts them one at a time.

Administrators can also add Ongoing Analysis from the Focus Areas page under Administration → AI Strategist: choose the process and fill in What should I work out?

Ask the question you actually want answered

“What is the Material Log telling us about where our money goes?” gets you further than “Is the Material Log filled in?” The Strategist works on the question you give it, so give it the one that matters to the business.

How often it runs

An Ongoing Analysis runs every week by default. To change that, just ask the Strategist: “run the materials analysis every day” or “only check that every two weeks.” It can run as often as once a day, and no more often than that.

In a week when nothing in the process has changed, it skips the run, because the answer cannot have moved.

Ask more than one question

One process can have several Ongoing Analyses, each working on a different question, and each is named after its question so you can tell them apart. Asking the same question twice does not create a second one: the Strategist points you to the one already working on it, and offers to adjust that one instead. The same goes for rewording one so it matches another.

To change the question, pause an analysis, or stop it, ask the Strategist in chat or use the Focus Areas page.