Imagine trying to teach a four-ton elephant to dance. The agility required isn’t natural given the elephant’s physical structure. This scenario parallels the struggle of large organizations to rapidly respond to emerging challenges like AI.
How can large organizations identify the right AI use cases when multiple departments are involved and approvals can take months (or years)?
This is where Trenegy’s ACE Method comes into play. ACE stands for Accelerate, Collaborate, and Execute. By embracing ACE, organizations can structure a focused, cross-functional effort to identify, validate, and roadmap AI solutions that deliver real, tangible value.
In large organizations, good ideas for AI are often buried in departmental silos. A well-structured ACE Method workshop offers a two-day sprint (within a two-week overall initiative) to gather the right experts—IT, finance, operations, human resources, sales, and business leads—in the same room. The end goal is to know where to us AI in the business.
Brainstorm Phase: Teams collectively list out pain points and strategic priorities where AI might help. This is not a scattershot contest, but a guided session grounded in the organization’s biggest challenges: cost reduction, operational efficiency, or new revenue streams.
Feedback Session: During the feedback session that follows each brainstorming round, teams hear from other departments, quickly ruling out ideas that aren’t feasible or impactful. Because Accelerate emphasizes quick ideation, you can focus on a short list of plausible AI opportunities in days—not months.
Key Outcome: A short list of potential AI use cases tied to pressing business needs. These should be clearly defined and rapidly surfaced before momentum is lost.
After creating a short list, the ACE Method moves the group into charter development. Each potential AI use case gets a structured overview:
This charter phase is vital. In many large organizations, even a seemingly brilliant AI idea gets stuck in approval purgatory. The ACE Method workshop environment—in an off-site space or dedicated on-site session—eliminates daily distractions that typically derail collaboration. Leaders and functional experts work face-to-face, making immediate decisions on how to refine or scrap AI ideas.
Key Outcome: Solid, cross-functional charters for each high-potential AI use case, ensuring all stakeholders understand the benefits, challenges, and next steps.
With charters in hand, teams enter the final concept challenge within the ACE workshop—building implementation roadmaps. This step lays out:
By the end of this exercise, the organization has clear, time-bound plans for each AI initiative. Dependencies (like data preparation or staff training) are addressed up front so nothing derails the pilot once it starts.
In a traditional setting, finalizing a plan could take months of back-and-forth meetings. The ACE Method compresses the timeline to two weeks, including preparation, a two-day workshop, and presentation phases. That means going from concept to a fully sanctioned AI roadmap in the time it normally takes to schedule an initial steering committee meeting.
Key Outcome: A cohesive, realistic roadmap for piloting and scaling AI solutions—produced in days rather than months—ensuring the enterprise elephant starts to dance quickly.
In a short period of time organizations can go from asking “Which AI use cases should we pursue?” to “Here’s the pilot we’ll launch next week—and here’s how we’ll scale it.”
That’s the power of combining a disciplined, time-bound process with the cross-functional insight needed to bring AI projects across the finish line. By harnessing the ACE Method for AI, you empower your own four-ton enterprise to move confidently into an AI-driven future.
At Trenegy, we help organizations find and implement realistic AI use cases for business success. To chat more about the ACE Method or other AI solutions, email us at info@trenegy.com.
Trenegy is a non-traditional consulting firm based in Houston, Texas.