Overcoming the “last mile” problem in AI adoption with Lucid Software

There’s no denying the technology that has defined the 2020s to date: artificial intelligence, led by generative AI. Businesses of all sizes throughout the world are rushing to implement AI to automate tasks, accelerate decision-making, improve customer experience, and create products or services.

But many companies are struggling to realise the full potential of this transformative technology. Only 34% of organisations say their AI projects have returned a positive ROI for most or all initiatives, according to Lucid Software’s AI Readiness Report.

The “last mile” is where these projects are failing. In the world of logistics, companies can optimise warehouses, trucks, and routes endlessly, but if the package never makes it to the customer’s front door, all that effort does not matter. AI transformation faces a similar challenge. Without smooth integration into daily workflows, even the most advanced models cannot deliver real business value. Let’s explore how to close this critical gap between powerful AI capabilities and successful business implementation.

The root cause of slow agentic AI adoption

Many organisations dove headfirst into AI with their operations still fragmented. According to Lucid Software’s research, 48% of knowledge workers say that their organisation’s current operational workflows are somewhat or hardly well-documented. The majority say this information has no centralised location, with 60% saying that half or more of their team’s workflows rely on informal or person-dependent knowledge, and even more (77%) rely on institutional knowledge to complete work.

So much time and money are being invested in AI, yet its effectiveness depends entirely on the
knowledge it has access to. Without documented workflows and a clear understanding of tacit
knowledge, a business risks undermining its own AI implementation.

How to take AI transformation through the last mile

AI transformation can be broken down into three stages: readiness, strategy, and execution. This framework helps any organisation successfully integrate AI into all aspects of its operations, products, and services, anchored in robust, living documentation. It allows you to chart your AI transformation or course-correct existing efforts if they are not yielding expected results.

Readiness: Conduct a readiness assessment by mapping and auditing your team’s current workflows, data flows, and architectures. This is a useful exercise that often illuminates just how much is undocumented or lives in people’s heads. This institutional knowledge must be extracted, organised, and codified in a way that is actionable for transformation.

Strategy: Creating an AI strategy requires leaders to collaborate as they brainstorm opportunities, prioritise them, and develop practical roadmaps. The tangible results of this strategic planning include defining goals, risks, and metrics for AI pilots, mapping out future systems and processes, and establishing detailed timelines.

Execution: A comprehensive AI strategy requires strong execution, which depends on living
documentation for team members and AI agents to follow. Documentation like an AI agent directory or organisational charts, and/or protocols for AI agent modeling (e.g., human-in-the-loop process maps) greatly aids in clarifying the roles, responsibilities, and operational procedures for effective human-AI collaboration.

Lucid Software: Your platform to fast-track documentation and ensure ROI from AI

Organisations that succeed in implementing AI are mature in their processes and have end-to-end documentation in place, allowing AI agents to flourish on top of a trusted, accurate data set. In the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite (Lucidchart and Lucidspark), teams can centralise and visualize workflows, ensuring processes are clearly defined and aligned for effective AI implementation. Lucid supports AI transformation with 100+ integrations, intuitive collaboration features, advanced documentation add-ons, and a professional services team that delivers tailored solutions.

By supporting the creation of resources like business process maps and data flow diagrams, Lucid helps capture tacit knowledge and solves the issue of relying on typically out-of-date organisational documentation.

Most organisations are still early in their AI transformation journey, but many have already found process and protocol maps created in a solution like Lucid invaluable. For example, a leading fintech company reports that AI is already reshaping how its teams work, with Lucid playing a central role in that shift. The company uses Lucid to map and iterate on AI workflows early in the process, enabling business teams to gain clarity before codifying those workflows in other systems.

Make living documentation your next priority

The best time for leaders to invest in living documentation was yesterday. The next best time is now.  

There is a renewed commitment toward process documentation now that it has proven essential for implementing agentic AI workflows and generating meaningful ROI from organisational AI investments. Lucid can help teams visualise and accelerate documentation in order to operationalise AI transformation. If leaders do their part to provide the documentation and context AI needs to thrive, the “last mile” issue will fade away in the latter half of this decade.