AI Workflow Harmonization
Transforming manual vendor research into an AI-powered decision engine for managing multiple client projects.
Company
Olive Technologies
Timeline
2025
—
2025
Role
Lead Product Strategist & Designer
Focus
Workflow Synthesis, Activation Strategy, Decision Support
Impact
Reduced time-to-vendor-evaluation by 60%, enabling consultants to manage 2x client projects simultaneously
Project overview
Consultants manage multiple client projects in parallel. Each project means a new vendor evaluation—research requirements, compare 20+ solutions, defend recommendations to stakeholders. This is critical work, but it's also manual, repetitive, and exhausting. Olive is an AI powered vendor research and evaluation platform for consultants with user pain points.
The core friction: Evaluation work eats time that should go to strategy.
Setup Paralysis: Creating a project should take 15 minutes but took 2 hours. Consultants typed requirements line-by-line, fought unclear AI suggestions, and felt like the tool was slowing them down, not speeding them up
Cold Start Problem: A blank canvas meant experienced consultants had to mentally bootstrap every project from scratch, repeating the same decisions across clients
AI That Wasn't Useful: "Magic Fill" was buried in the UI. AI suggestions appeared without context, making it hard to trust or act on them.
Invisible Activation Milestone: After 30 minutes of setup, consultants landed on a confusing screen with no clear "what's next?" so they often abandoned
Critical Decisions
A major debate: Should we allow consultants to skip setup steps to move fast?
The Decision: We added deliberate friction, an "Informed Skip" warning modal that says, "If you skip Challenge Identification, AI recommendations will be generic."
The Rationale: Consultants are efficiency-driven (based on user research). They'll skip if they can. But we wanted them to understand the trade-off. A consultant skipping setup and then complaining AI suggestions are useless is a failure. Better to pause them once and let them decide with full information.
This is "friction as a feature" i.e. strategic friction that prevents mistakes.
The Solution
We delivered a "Co-Pilot Consultant" experience that handles the research grunt work.
Intelligent Project Setup: Three context questions. AI generates a starter scaffold. Consultant reviews, edits, launches i.e. not builds from scratch
Bulk Import for Power Users: For consultants with existing RFPs, we added document upload (AI extracts requirements) and text-area paste (smart parsing auto-converts lists)
Decision Confidence at a Glance: Vendor cards now show score, key differentiators, and confidence reasoning. Consultants can compare 5 vendors in parallel, not serial-click through each one
Magic Fill, Visible: Animation and value preview ("Generate 24 insights in 30 seconds?") surface the AI power. Consultants understand what they're getting before spending credits
Results
By shifting from manual evaluation to AI-assisted evaluation, we transformed Olive from a research tool into a productivity multiplier for consultants.
Scaled Throughput: Reduced setup time from 2 hours to 15 minutes, allowing consultants to evaluate 2x projects per week
Activation Clarity: Defined a measurable activation event ("Review your top 3 matches"), eliminating the "now what?" confusion
Consultant Retention: Experienced consultants now leverage the tool across clients, building habits and cross-project learning
Competitive Advantage: Consultants using Olive can deliver vendor recommendations 60% faster, making them more efficient and more profitable
AI Workflow Harmonization
Transforming manual vendor research into an AI-powered decision engine for managing multiple client projects.
Company
Olive Technologies
Timeline
2025
—
2025
Role
Lead Product Strategist & Designer
Focus
Workflow Synthesis, Activation Strategy, Decision Support
Impact
Reduced time-to-vendor-evaluation by 60%, enabling consultants to manage 2x client projects simultaneously
Project overview
Consultants manage multiple client projects in parallel. Each project means a new vendor evaluation—research requirements, compare 20+ solutions, defend recommendations to stakeholders. This is critical work, but it's also manual, repetitive, and exhausting. Olive is an AI powered vendor research and evaluation platform for consultants with user pain points.
The core friction: Evaluation work eats time that should go to strategy.
Setup Paralysis: Creating a project should take 15 minutes but took 2 hours. Consultants typed requirements line-by-line, fought unclear AI suggestions, and felt like the tool was slowing them down, not speeding them up
Cold Start Problem: A blank canvas meant experienced consultants had to mentally bootstrap every project from scratch, repeating the same decisions across clients
AI That Wasn't Useful: "Magic Fill" was buried in the UI. AI suggestions appeared without context, making it hard to trust or act on them.
Invisible Activation Milestone: After 30 minutes of setup, consultants landed on a confusing screen with no clear "what's next?" so they often abandoned
Critical Decisions
A major debate: Should we allow consultants to skip setup steps to move fast?
The Decision: We added deliberate friction, an "Informed Skip" warning modal that says, "If you skip Challenge Identification, AI recommendations will be generic."
The Rationale: Consultants are efficiency-driven (based on user research). They'll skip if they can. But we wanted them to understand the trade-off. A consultant skipping setup and then complaining AI suggestions are useless is a failure. Better to pause them once and let them decide with full information.
This is "friction as a feature" i.e. strategic friction that prevents mistakes.
The Solution
We delivered a "Co-Pilot Consultant" experience that handles the research grunt work.
Intelligent Project Setup: Three context questions. AI generates a starter scaffold. Consultant reviews, edits, launches i.e. not builds from scratch
Bulk Import for Power Users: For consultants with existing RFPs, we added document upload (AI extracts requirements) and text-area paste (smart parsing auto-converts lists)
Decision Confidence at a Glance: Vendor cards now show score, key differentiators, and confidence reasoning. Consultants can compare 5 vendors in parallel, not serial-click through each one
Magic Fill, Visible: Animation and value preview ("Generate 24 insights in 30 seconds?") surface the AI power. Consultants understand what they're getting before spending credits
Results
By shifting from manual evaluation to AI-assisted evaluation, we transformed Olive from a research tool into a productivity multiplier for consultants.
Scaled Throughput: Reduced setup time from 2 hours to 15 minutes, allowing consultants to evaluate 2x projects per week
Activation Clarity: Defined a measurable activation event ("Review your top 3 matches"), eliminating the "now what?" confusion
Consultant Retention: Experienced consultants now leverage the tool across clients, building habits and cross-project learning
Competitive Advantage: Consultants using Olive can deliver vendor recommendations 60% faster, making them more efficient and more profitable