Ask almost any chief executive and they’ll tell you that their business’s people are its most valuable assets. No doubt that’s true but unlocking the value of those people – all their knowledge, experience and expertise – gets harder and harder as organisations grow bigger. Enter the Swiss start-up Supervised, which claims artificial intelligence (AI) can confront this problem.
“Large organisations, with so many people, layers of management, physical locations and time zones, are highly inefficient,” says Adrien Treccani, CEO of Supervised, which is today announcing the successful completion of its first seed investment round. “Leaders spend so much time trying to understand the context of the challenges that the business faces.” One recent study suggested knowledge loss costs Fortune 500 companies more than $30 billion a year, he points out.
In particular, Treccani points to the countless hours manager spend in meetings with their teams and individual employees; much of this time is spent getting updates and reports on work in progress, rather than on operational or strategic issues that might move the dial for the business’s commercial performance. “Managers are spending up to 30% of their time in status meetings while critical insights remain trapped in endless update cycles,” Treccani adds. “The most valuable insights never reach decision makers.”
This is where Supervised can help, the company believes. Exploiting the latest developments in AI, it aims to help businesses collect routine information from staff so that leaders can spent more time on more valuable interactions. Supervised has developed AI agents that can manage phone calls with team members – the agent asks individual employees about the progress they’re making with key tasks, gathering updates on any problems or new developments. It can then summarise this information in reports to their managers.
“We’re building the intelligence backbone of the organisation,” Treccani says. “We deal with the main burden that large organisations face today – how to ensure that key information flows upwards.”
Do individual employees resent having to account for themselves to an AI agent, rather than their human managers? Treccani says that Supervised’s implementations to date suggest not. For one thing, he says, the quality of AI-generated voice agents is now high that employees enjoy the interaction. Conversations are also to the point and can be scheduled at a time that most suits the employee.
“Supervised isn’t going to replace managers altogether but it will free up managers to manage, rather than focusing on status updates,” Treccani adds. “They’ll be able to jump in at a much earlier stage to support their teams.”
If the concept seems remarkable, Supervised points to early successes with enterprise customers in sectors including consumer goods, manufacturing and finance. It is also beginning to get traction with large public sector organisations. Most of its deployments are relatively small-scale, but several clients are now expanding their use of the company’s technology.
Supervised, which launched commercially in the third quarter of last year, believes it has developed the right technology at the right time. The company points out that 40 million baby boomers are due to retire from organisations in Western markets over the next decade, representing an unprecedented loss of knowledge. Also, the shift to new models of work, including remote and hybrid working, have added to the communications challenges faced by many organisations.
More broadly, market research suggests the global market for enterprise intelligence platforms could be worth $60 billion by 2033. Advances in voice AI are continuing at pace, underpinning Supervised’s approach.
The company’s first investment round – Supervised is not disclosing publicly how much it has raised – will provide it with additional financial firepower to exploit such opportunities. “We see significant scale-up opportunity across all industry segments, as both large and small firms face similar challenges in leveraging AI effectively,” adds Treccani.
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