David Ray — Applied AI for Real Work

I make AI useful for people who have actual work to do.

I’m David Ray. I help small businesses and lean teams figure out where AI can genuinely help, then turn the promising ideas into working tools, clearer workflows, and fewer manual headaches.

Tell me what’s slowing you down

Start with the messy process. We can figure out the technology after.

Portrait of David Ray smiling, wearing a gray knit sweater, with warm evening lights behind him

The point isn’t more AI. It’s less friction.

Most businesses don’t need an “AI transformation.” They need someone who can understand how the work gets done, spot where time is leaking, and build the smallest useful fix.

I work between the technical systems and the people who actually have to use them. That means translating vague ideas into clear workflows, building practical tools, and explaining the result without turning every conversation into a software-architecture lecture.

From “could AI do this?” to something your team can actually use.

Research and analysis systems

Turn dense documents, long videos, audio, and scattered information into structured findings, searchable knowledge, and useful deliverables.

Workflow automation

Map repetitive processes, connect the tools you already use, and reduce the copying, chasing, checking, and rechecking that eats up the week.

Prototypes and internal tools

Build the smallest useful version of an idea so you can test it against real work before committing to a giant project and a heroic slide deck.

The kinds of problems I work on.

  • An important process lives partly in software and partly in one person’s head.
  • Your team spends hours reading, sorting, summarizing, or moving the same information around.
  • You have documents, calls, audio, or video that contain useful information but take too long to review.
  • Your current tools almost work together, which is sometimes more annoying than not working together at all.
  • You have an AI idea but need to determine whether it is useful, feasible, and worth building.

Start with the work. Add technology where it earns its place.

1. Understand the real workflow

We map what happens today, who touches it, where decisions are made, and what keeps slowing things down.

2. Find the useful leverage

I identify the parts AI or automation can improve without forcing the rest of the business to reorganize around a science project.

3. Build the smallest useful version

We put a working tool in front of real users and real inputs as quickly as the problem allows.

4. Keep what proves valuable

We improve the parts that save time, reduce mistakes, or create better decisions. The clever-but-useless parts are allowed to die peacefully.

I’m David.

My background spans product management, business analysis, operations, and applied AI across healthcare technology, transportation and logistics, e-commerce, and media.

I’m usually most useful when the problem is still messy: the process is only partly documented, the tools don’t quite talk to each other, and everyone agrees something should improve but nobody wants to spend six months defining it.

I can work through the business problem with a non-technical team, then get technical enough to prototype and build the solution. In plain English: I speak both workflow and software.

A good reason to email me.

You have a process that takes too long, involves too much copy-and-paste, or keeps falling back to the one person who knows how everything works.

You suspect AI could help, but you don’t need a keynote. You need someone to examine the workflow, identify the useful part, and make it real.

Show me the annoying workflow.

Tell me what your team is doing manually, what keeps breaking, or what you wish your current tools could handle. I’ll tell you what I think is practical.

Email David david@heydavid.co