AI: start with stacking dull wins

The AI tools now available allow every investment firm to ask itself an incredibly important, but incredibly basic question: if I were building this process today, would I build it the same way? If I did not have all of these legacy systems holding me back, what would I do?

Andrew Ryan is chief information officer at Harbert Management Corporation

That question is especially important for mid-market real estate managers, who have become increasingly squeezed in a fundraising landscape polarised between mega-managers and emerging boutiques. However, if new systems are implemented correctly, AI-native mid-market managers, freed from burdensome back office functions, can do three things: 1) higher value tasks; 2) the necessary task of repositioning themselves for the coming cycle; and 3) focus above all else on what matters most - serving their clients.          

Agentic AI means being midsize need not be the disadvantage it may have been in the past. In many cases, we think it can be  an advantage. We carry less of the complexity and bureaucracy that larger organisations must work through to transform themselves. With a few of the right people, we can propose an idea, build a working prototype quickly and start solving our own problems without begging for priority on a vendor’s roadmap or spending a fortune on outside consultants.     

A few years ago, the engineering function and the level of maturity required to do this would have been unachievable for many firms. Now, we believe we have incredible opportunities sitting inside our own offices, in processes designed around limitations that may no longer exist.     

By building targeted internal tools at Harbert Management Corporation, we have used custom software to reduce everyday operational friction and free our teams to focus on higher-value work. We replaced slow, manual tasks, like emailing internal teams for standard forms, hunting through shared folders for entity reference data and tracking support requests across scattered inboxes, with self-service solutions. 

Through a handful of internal self-service tools covering tax-form requests, entity reference data, support ticketing, and internal knowledge search, we have transformed recurring administrative bottlenecks into reliable, streamlined processes that reduce turnaround time and cut down on back-and-forth across our firm.

Beyond the commercial imperative, I also think we have a responsibility to do something with the opportunity AI presents. There is something inherently good about making people’s lives better by removing tasks that cause workplace stress, and dissatisfaction.

Everyone knows the process. It is the spreadsheet somebody dreads building on Monday. It is the tracker that takes hours to assemble every month. It is the repetitive task that makes Sunday night worse because somebody knows it is waiting for them in the morning. These can be the worst parts of people’s jobs.      

If we can remove one of those processes, we should. If we have the ability to give somebody those hours back and take away a task they genuinely dread, I think we have something close to a moral obligation to try. That is a real improvement in a person’s life. Do it across several people, and the office becomes a more pleasant place to work. Over time, that flows through to the quality of our decisions, the tenure of our most valuable colleagues, and in turn, the outcomes of our deals.           

Most advances will consist of dull wins rather than a silver bullet or a massive platform win. Pick one, two, or three processes that everybody complains about and everybody hates. Gather the people willing to break those problems down to first principles, get rid of unnecessary process debt, and start moving.

Exploration and experimentation are important. But they cannot replace work. It should take 10 or 20 percent of our time at max. At some point, we have to stop, gather what we learned, decide what should be done, and go after it. Go hard. Go fast. Use those advantages we talked about earlier of being nimble and quick, with fewer layers of bureaucracy slowing you down.

The difference will not always show up tomorrow or next week. The bigger difference will show up over months, quarters, and years as these wins multiply exponentially one atop another. It will show up in better processes, better analysis, better decisions, and even better versions of your colleagues. This is how the gap between firms will grow.

My message to peers is: you can keep doing what you are doing. Nobody is going to stop you. But we believe the market on the other side of the next few years is likely to look very different. The firms that start now, attack the work people hate, make decisions, and stack the dull wins have the potential to  be in a very different position from the firms that never get started or spend years exploring and never actually do anything.

Andrew Ryan is chief information officer at Harbert Management Corporation