Mastech's AI-First Employees: Not Just Able to Use AI Tools, but Able to Reconstruct Processes

For years, the IT services industry sold productivity: more people, more projects, more hours and, eventually, more automation. AI is challenging that model, forcing services companies to rethink not just how work gets done, but what customers should pay for in the first place.

Mastech is taking this shift inward through its Autonomous Enterprise initiative, treating itself as its own customer zero. The company says it has achieved 67% productivity gains from its AI-first operations, as it rethinks internal processes using AI, automation and agentic workflows. The aim is to apply the lessons from its own transformation to help customers navigate their AI journeys.

“As a company that helps clients navigate data and AI transformation, we believe credibility starts with practicing what we preach,” says Kannan Sugantharaman, Chief Finance and Operations Officer at Mastech.

The company began by identifying areas where employees spend time on manual, repetitive and low-value activities, then rethinking those processes using AI. AI agents now support work across Finance, HR, IT, Security and operations, with the aim of accelerating cycle times, reducing manual touchpoints and improving the employee experience.

Rather than treating AI as another technology rollout, Mastech is using the initiative to change how its organisation operates and understand what it takes to move from experimentation to business outcomes.

“The lessons we are learning as we transform our own enterprise are the same insights we can bring to our clients as they pursue their own AI transformation journeys,” Kannan says.

The AI-first employee

Redesigning work around AI also changes the skills an organisation needs. As AI takes on repetitive tasks and supports more complex workflows, employees must be able to identify opportunities for improvement, experiment with new approaches and combine technical expertise with an understanding of business needs.

This is shaping Mastech's approach to hiring and developing talent. Sandhya Ramesh, Chief People Officer at Mastech, says the company is looking for people with "unlimited curiosity" and the drive to experiment, innovate and help customers win with AI.

“We are looking for people with unlimited curiosity, the drive to experiment, innovate and help our customers win with AI,” Ramesh says. “They should have a mindset to build – the organisation, technology, solutions, culture and in the process reinvent themselves as we embark on this exciting journey of growth.”

Mastech is looking beyond AI specialists to technology experts, domain specialists, functional professionals and emerging talent who can contribute to this transformation. Its people strategy emphasises inclusion, collaboration and continuous learning, recognising that employees need room to develop their skills as the nature of work changes.

The AI-first employee, in this model, is not simply someone who knows how to use an AI tool. It is someone who can apply professional expertise to rethink processes and build better ways of working.

From productivity to value creation

Mastech’s internal transformation reflects a broader shift in how enterprises need to approach AI. Using AI to write reports faster or summarise documents can improve individual productivity, but redesigning an entire workflow can change the outcome of the work itself.

That is the distinction Mastech is trying to explore through its Autonomous Enterprise initiative. Rather than measuring success only by how much time employees save, the company is looking at how AI can improve processes, reduce friction and create a more effective operating model.

The same thinking informs its work with clients. The objective is to help organisations move beyond isolated AI applications towards systems that can take on meaningful tasks, supported by the right data, processes, governance and human oversight.

For Mastech, this shift means rethinking not just how AI is deployed, but how its people create value for customers. The company’s Autonomous Enterprise initiative is part of that effort, as it redesigns internal processes around AI and uses the lessons to help clients move towards outcome-driven services.

Debasis Satpathy, Chief Revenue Officer at Mastech believes the shift goes beyond adopting AI tools; it requires rethinking how IT services companies measure success and develop talent. “The next decade will reward value created and measured,” he says, as enterprises increasingly seek solutions tied to business objectives rather than services delivered.

That requires employees with deeper domain expertise and stronger systems thinking. “Engineers are becoming architects of decision systems. Analysts are becoming designers of the logic those systems reason with,” Satpathy says. For Mastech, this makes investing in people even more important, because “AI only amplifies the quality of the thinking behind it.”

The services company has to transform too

The IT services industry is entering a period in which access to skilled people and technology alone may no longer be enough to differentiate a company. Customers increasingly want partners who can help them redesign work, apply AI to real business problems and deliver measurable outcomes.

Mastech’s customer-zero approach is an attempt to build that capability through its own transformation. By testing AI across its internal functions, the company can learn from implementation challenges and carry those lessons into customer engagements.

The human-first approach is central to that ambition. Autonomy does not mean removing people from every process. It means determining which tasks AI can handle, where human judgement remains essential and how employees can focus on work that creates greater value.

The next generation of AI-first services companies will need to do more than deploy agents. They will have to rethink their operations, develop employees who can build with AI and demonstrate that the technology can deliver outcomes beyond individual productivity.

For Mastech, that transformation begins at home, with its own people and processes, before extending to the customers it helps to win with AI.