What Problem Was the Business Innovation Advisor Automation Built to Solve?
Shane: Hey Hunter, excited to be joining you again for our next edition of AI and Automation in Action, where we dive into real-world use cases of automation and what you're developing for clients. Today we're going to be diving into one of the automations you built for one of our internal team members, what we call our business innovation advisor. This role is really a consultant for our clients, helping them understand where they are with their technology, any budget requirements, strategy, and a lot of times that involves a lot of legwork pulling that information together. So why don't you give us an overview of what the situation was and the need was, and then we'll go into how we solved that problem.
Hunter: Thanks for having me again, Shane. The business innovation advisor role, each quarter or based on the contract with the client, that team member is sitting down with those stakeholders and visiting with them on their technology, where they need to be budgeting and forecasting for the next two to three, maybe even five years, depending on their compliance needs. It does take a lot of time to pull those reports, sign in to multiple different tools, and pull all of that data. On top of that, when pulling the reports, they have to sift through a lot of the data and remove items that may no longer be relevant, specific statuses, or tickets from teams that are no longer applicable.
How Was the Old Warranty Automation Rebuilt and Improved?
Hunter: We had an old automation that was pulling warranty details. It was a custom automation going out to vendors to get that warranty information, but on occasion it would fail due to a vendor performing maintenance or issues with serial numbers. What we did was rebuild that using a tool we have in place called Ninja, which is how we access end users' computers. Ninja already had that warranty information natively in the platform, so we rebuilt the automation to use Ninja instead of reaching out to vendor sites. That was the base foundation of this new automation.
What Data Does the Automation Pull and How Does It Work?
Hunter: Once we got that foundation fixed, we were able to layer on top of it and integrate with our ticketing platform. From there, we pull a report for each team: our support team, our technical alignment team doing environment assessments, escalated tickets, business innovation advisor tickets, and centralized service tickets covering things like backup failures and antivirus alerts.
The only thing required to kick off this automation is that the business innovation advisor fills out a form, selects a customer, and enters their ticket number. Once that form is submitted, the automation runs, pulls all warranty details, creates a unique spreadsheet and posts it as an attachment to the ticket, and separately creates four or five different reports for each team and their tickets. For support and maintenance tickets, a CSV is generated and attached to the ticket as well. So they get an overview of all tickets along with the warranty details.
What Features Are Being Added Next?
Hunter: The next step I am actively working through is pulling in quotes, since that is a separate item from tickets. We will also be pulling in projects and continuing to layer on additional tool integrations. We will be pulling in expirations, and while we already receive backup tickets, we are going to integrate our backup tool directly so we can get real-time and live alerting from that tool instead of relying solely on tickets being created. There are a few other things we will be adding, but the final goal is that with all of that data, we will be able to help forecast and create a two-year budget for those clients. The final output will be a summary in the ticket along with a table that can be taken directly into the client meeting.
Shane: That's incredible. I've sat in that role myself, and I know how much time it takes to go to different platforms, log in, select a date range, run reports, gather that data, put it into a spreadsheet, and compile everything before a client meeting. In the managed services space, it is not unusual for MSPs to be using 40 or 50 different tools to provide all of their services. You can imagine having to log into each one and run those reports independently. It is a huge task. Scott, our business innovation advisor who headed this charge, said he was spending hours doing this. Now he is down to a few minutes of clicking through the form.
Hunter: And to your point, I think we actually have the time savings listed a little low in our automation platform. We have it set at 30 minutes, but Scott noted that just the warranty and device expiration portion alone was saving him an hour to two hours for each meeting. I can't wait to see what this looks like once all of the other workflows are tied in.
Were These Integrations Built Using APIs or Native Connections?
Shane: When it comes to the integrations, was it primarily APIs, direct native integrations, or did you build everything from scratch?
Hunter: Right now we were able to use APIs. Some of the workflows we had already created, we were able to quickly copy and clone. When we get into the backup solution and some tools we have not interacted with yet or that don't have a native integration with our automation platform, we will need to create some custom HTTP calls or custom integrations so we can continue to interact with them reliably. The key thing is that with native integrations you get pre-built, pre-tested ways to interact, but with the platforms we are using today, it is pretty much limitless as long as there is an API. To extend this even further, you could probably even tie in something like a Figma app to go out and create dynamic visual reports and presentations from this data if you wanted to take it that far.
Shane: That's one of the most exciting parts of what we're doing at Innovative Automations. It's the creativity of looking not just at what we can build, but at what we can build that drives real time savings and efficiency output.
How Can AI Tools Help When You Are Unsure About API Support?
Hunter: The AI tools have been a big help throughout this process. If you are unsure whether a tool supports API access, a quick way to get an answer more than half the time is to ask an AI tool. Of course, make sure you are using a restricted or private instance if you are putting any sensitive data in. But if you are simply asking whether a tool supports API access, there is no harm in throwing that question into OpenAI, Grok, Gemini, or whatever tool you are using. Sometimes you won't get a definitive answer because documentation is paywalled by the vendor, so you may need to reach out to your account manager for direct confirmation. Use your AI tools, and if you have security questions, reach out to us at Innovative Automations. We are happy to help.
Shane: I appreciate the conversation. I always look forward to hearing what you're building and the work you're creating for our clients. Thanks again, Hunter.
Hunter: Absolutely. Thank you, Shane. Thanks for tuning in to AI and Automation in Action. If today's conversation sparked ideas about how AI or automation could improve your operations, we'd love to continue that discussion. Join us next time as we showcase another real-world implementation and break down how to deploy AI responsibly and effectively. To brainstorm with our team, email us anytime at ideas@innovativeautomations.ai. Until next time.