TL;DR
McKinsey finds 92% of companies plan to increase AI spending, but only 1% describe themselves as mature. kboodl founder Rebekah Kirkwood argues the gap is not technology but unoptimized workflows: repetitive formatting, manual document recreation, and systems that consume employee time instead of saving it. She estimates employees lose at least five hours weekly to these inefficiencies, around $13,000 per user per year. Her pitch: optimize what you already own before adding more tools.
Businesses have accelerated investment in artificial intelligence and digital transformation, with McKinsey research finding that 92% of companies plan to increase their AI investments over the next three years. Yet despite this momentum, only 1% of leaders describe their organizations as mature in AI deployment, revealing a significant gap between acquiring new technology and integrating it effectively into everyday work.
The global push toward digital transformation has created unprecedented access to powerful workplace tools, but access alone has not guaranteed better outcomes. Research on AI transformation projects published by the Business Process Management Journal has found that artificial intelligence can improve firm performance and drive process innovation, but the value of these technologies depends on how effectively organizations integrate critical capabilities such as data, talent, field expertise, and scalable infrastructure into their operations.
At the same time, employees are navigating increasingly complex digital environments. Microsoft’s Work Trend Index Pulse report found that many employees face challenges managing increasing digital demands, including information overload and limited time for focused work. The research highlights a growing gap between how organizations approach workplace technology and how employees experience its impact on their daily work.
This challenge is becoming more urgent as artificial intelligence moves from experimentation into everyday business operations. While AI has introduced powerful capabilities for generating content, analyzing information, and supporting decision-making, its effectiveness depends on the systems surrounding it. Organizations still need clear processes, structured workflows, thoughtful technology design, and training to ensure innovation translates into meaningful productivity gains.
Rebekah “Bek” Callipari Kirkwood, founder of kboodl, believes businesses have overlooked one of the most important opportunities in digital transformation: optimizing the technology they already own. Drawing on over three decades of enterprise expertise, Bek argues that many organizations are measuring software investment while failing to measure the productivity losses created by inefficient workflows.
“The biggest productivity problem inside organizations is often the one nobody measures,” Bek says. “It is the hidden time lost to repetitive tasks, inconsistent processes, and systems that require employees to spend energy managing technology instead of using it to create value.”
Bek believes technology itself does not create productivity. The workflows, automation, and systems built around technology determine whether employees can use those tools effectively. Across organizations, employees often spend hours on these inefficiencies. However, research shows that employees save at least five hours each week, equivalent to an estimated $13,000 per user annually, by streamlining tasks such as formatting documents, searching for information, recreating materials, and manually completing administrative work.
These inefficiencies are difficult to identify because they rarely appear as a single major operational failure. Instead, they accumulate across teams and departments, creating a hidden cost that affects deadlines, employee experience, and business performance.
“Spending a few hours or days fixing a document or repeating a manual process may seem insignificant in isolation,” Bek explains. “Across an entire organization, those small inefficiencies become a major barrier to productivity.”
As companies explore AI adoption, Bek believes many are placing too much expectation on the technology alone. AI can accelerate brainstorming, content creation, and information analysis, but it does not automatically understand an organization’s unique requirements, including brand consistency, document structures, governance standards, and operational workflows.
“AI is an incredibly valuable assistant, but it does not replace the expertise required to design systems people trust and use consistently,” Bek says. “The future of work will depend on combining artificial intelligence with human judgment, intelligent automation, and well-designed processes.”
Bek argues that organizations also need to rethink how they approach employee training. Companies often allocate more budget to train workers how to navigate complicated processes rather than investing in automated solutions to eliminate unnecessary work.
This approach can create a cycle where employees revert to previous outdated documents that may be off-brand. Instead, organizations should be refactoring their templates and systems to create a newn some workplaces, employees may hesitate to acknowledge difficulties with software because technical struggles can be perceived as a lack of capability
“Productivity should be measured by how efficiently people can achieve meaningful outcomes, not by how many resources are required to complete routine tasks,” Bek says.
According to her, better workplace systems create benefits that extend beyond financial performance. She points to an infrastructure project where teams previously worked late nights preparing a months-long bid submission. After implementing improved automation and document management systems, employees completed the work ahead of schedule, returned home on time, and successfully secured a multibillion-dollar government project.
The experience demonstrated how operational improvements can strengthen both employee well-being and business results. Better systems reduce unnecessary stress, improve accuracy, and allow professionals to focus their expertise on higher-value responsibilities.
Bek built kboodl around this principle, combining 30 years of enterprise expertise into a premium digital asset engineered to outlast the AI hype. She says, “Organizations should invest in bespoke technology solutions that improve their everyday work processes rather than adding multiple generic programs to try and fit their needs. The next stage of digital transformation will require leaders to evaluate technology investments differently. The most important question is how much productivity organizations are losing because existing tools are not being optimized.”
Bek believes companies that will maximize profits are those that create environments where technology genuinely supports their employees. She notes, “The next competitive advantage will belong to organizations that stop chasing more technology and start making the technology they already have work better for their people.“
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