Building Custom Automations: Crawl → Walk → Run Framework
Why Crawl, Walk and Run?
Businesses today are under increasing pressure to adopt AI and automation. Leaders see the potential for faster operations, smarter workflows, and better customer experiences. However, many initiatives fail because they are rushed, unstructured, or lack a solid foundation.
Employees often experiment with “shadow AI” tools that introduce compliance and security risks. IT teams struggle to keep up with the demand for AI while ensuring governance and protection of sensitive data. Leadership, eager for results, may invest in large-scale automation before the groundwork is in place, which leads to low adoption and wasted resources.
The “Crawl → Walk → Run” framework provides a phased roadmap for adopting automation responsibly. Each stage builds on the last: Crawl focuses on laying the foundation, Walk on streamlining processes, and Run on scaling with custom builds.
Crawl: Establishing the Foundation
The objective is to build trust, introduce AI safely, and eliminate shadow AI within the organization. By introducing a company AI assistant, employees gain access to a sanctioned, user-friendly tool that supports everyday tasks such as summarizing documents, drafting responses, and answering company FAQs. This approach delivers immediate value without requiring deep integrations or extensive technical effort. Compliance and visibility are built in, every interaction is logged to create a clear audit trail, and all sensitive information remains within approved environments to ensure data protection!
In addressing the risk of shadow AI, employees no longer need to rely on external tools like ChatGPT or other consumer-grade assistants. Centralizing AI access mitigates data leakage risks and ensures consistent guardrails. Beyond security, the initiative fosters cultural benefits: employees develop confidence and AI literacy in a safe setting, while leaders gain visibility into AI usage patterns and emerging needs. Ultimately, this establishes a secure, trusted foundation for AI adoption, achieving early wins, reducing risk, and gathering valuable insights for future opportunities.
Walk: Automating Processes
The purpose of this stage is to expand beyond individual productivity and begin streamlining team and organizational workflows. This marks a shift in focus, from supporting specific employees to removing bottlenecks that slow down cross-departmental work. Here, automation evolves from being a convenience to becoming an operational necessity!
Practical use cases span functions. Within HR, it can automate onboarding, document collection, and answering employee questions. In the Finance sector, it can help handle invoice approvals, expense processing, and regulatory reporting. In Operations, streamlining ticket routing, inventory tracking, and scheduling; and at Customer Support, managing first-line inquiries, ticket triage, and maintaining the knowledge base. The benefits are clear that repetitive, rules-based tasks are consistently managed at scale, freeing employees to focus on strategic work.
As a result, workflows become faster, more predictable, and less prone to error. The business impact is tangible, productivity gains are measurable, cost savings are realized, and both customers and employees experience faster, more reliable service. Ultimately, AI becomes embedded into daily business operations, proving its ROI and building momentum for more advanced initiatives.
Run: Scaling with Custom Builds
The goal at this third stage is to move beyond operational efficiency and begin creating true business differentiation through AI. While off-the-shelf automation tools can deliver immediate value, they rarely provide a lasting competitive edge. Real advantage comes from custom AI solutions, built around an organization’s unique systems, data, and goals, that unlock innovation competitors cannot easily replicate.
In this “Run” phase, companies develop bespoke AI workflows, models, and applications that integrate deeply into enterprise systems such as CRMs, ERPs, and data warehouses. AI is customized to meet specific compliance, regulatory, and customer requirements, and specialized models are trained using proprietary company data. Examples of such custom builds include a bank deploying real-time fraud detection powered by AI-driven signals, a retailer offering personalized promotions based on individual customer histories, or a logistics company predicting supply chain disruptions and automatically rerouting shipments.
To scale effectively, organizations must establish strong governance and monitoring frameworks to maintain compliance, while continuously refining models based on real-world performance. Training and change management are equally vital to ensure adoption across the enterprise. The outcome is a transformation of automation from a support function into a strategic differentiator, one that fuels growth, strengthens resilience, and drives long-term innovation.
The Roadmap to Responsible Automation with CCG by Your Side
Moving too fast invites risk and moving too slowly risks being left behind! A phased, structured approach unlocks compounding value at every stage while keeping governance, security, and adoption in check.
CCG is the right partner to guide organizations through every stage of their AI and automation journey. With deep strategic and technical solutions, we provide the strategic guidance and technology advisory needed to navigate the complexities of infrastructure, integrations, and vendor selection, ensuring every automation initiative is both technically feasible and aligned with business goals.
First, assess where your organization currently resides in the “Crawl → Walk → Run” continuum. Then, engage with CCG to map out the right next steps, whether that’s selecting your first AI assistant, designing process automations, or building bespoke models. Together, we can begin or accelerate the journey toward structured, scalable automation. Contact us today to unlock value at each phase while maintaining control, compliance, and alignment to business needs!
