What Is the $800 Million Question?

Sometimes a simple question can expose a much bigger opportunity.

Toyota was managing its supply chain with around 100 people and 75 spreadsheets when someone asked:

“If Amazon can track a $10 book, why can’t we track a $40,000 car?”

Instead of finding a faster way to manage the same process, Toyota reconsidered how the work should happen. The company built a digital twin of its supply chain, bringing 2.5 million cars, their parts, builds, and deliveries into one model. According to the case study, the change created $800 million in value.

The lesson is not that every AI initiative should produce an $800 million return. It is that the biggest opportunities often come when we stop asking how technology can make existing work faster and start asking whether the work should happen differently in the first place.

At Palladin, we think about that shift through three ideas: focus, rewire, and the people who make it happen.

Focus: Start with a problem worth solving

AI can be applied almost anywhere, but that does not mean it should be.

Choose two or three areas where change could make a meaningful difference. Then look beyond individual tasks to understand the larger problem.

In customer service, for example, the goal might not be writing responses faster. It might be helping an employee resolve an issue without searching several systems or sending the customer between departments.

Start with the problem and the value of solving it. Then determine where AI belongs.

Rewire: Look beyond the existing workflow

Once you know where to focus, follow the work from beginning to end.

Where does information come from? Which systems need to connect? Where are people manually moving information or waiting for answers?

An AI assistant might help a service representative draft a response in seconds. But if that person still has to chase down an order update manually, only one part of the job has improved.

Rewiring means asking whether the process itself should change. That could mean connecting systems, improving access to data, automating handoffs, or redesigning how decisions are made.

Toyota did not build a better spreadsheet. It found a different way to manage the work.

People: Build with the people doing the work

Technology alone does not understand every exception, workaround, or frustration inside a process. The people doing the work do.

Toyota brought sales, manufacturing, and planning experts into the process from the beginning. They helped build the solution rather than receiving it at the end.

The same principle applies to AI initiatives. Invite users in early. Ask them how the work really happens, let them challenge assumptions, and give them a role in shaping the new process.

Training and support still matter, but adoption should begin long before launch.

So, what is your $800 million question?

It may have nothing to do with tracking a car, and the opportunity may look very different for your business.

The important question is:

What are we doing today simply because that is how the work has always been done, and what could we do differently now?

At Palladin, we help organizations answer that question by bringing business needs, people, processes, data, and technology into the same conversation. If you’re ready to look beyond individual AI use cases and identify where AI could create meaningful change in your business, let’s find the question worth asking together.