Integration Design for an AI Agent Deployed Inside a Client's Business Systems
Company: Sierra
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Design an AI system that plugs into another company's data and business workflows, so it can do useful work inside that company's existing processes.
```hint Start from one workflow
Pick one concrete process the other company runs today and trace each step to the system it touches. What the AI must read, what it must write and who has to approve it tell you most of the design.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Is the other company our customer deploying the AI (for example, a retailer putting an AI agent in front of its shoppers), or a partner whose data we bring into our own product?
- What should the AI do inside those workflows: answer questions, draft work for employees to approve, or take actions on its own?
- Where does the data live: common software tools with APIs (CRM, ticketing, order management) or homegrown internal systems?
- Who on the other company's side sets the system up and owns it: their engineers, an operations team without engineers, or our own deployment team?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A concrete choice of client and workflow, and the users on both sides: the client's admins, security team and operators, and the people the AI serves.
- How the AI gets context and acts: connectors, data access patterns, permissions, and how the client's business rules become enforceable policy.
- Trust for another company's data: isolation between clients, least privilege, retention, audit trails, and approval steps for risky actions.
- Onboarding and time to value: setup, testing on the client's real cases, staged rollout, and who maintains integrations afterward.
- Success metrics for the client and for our business, with guardrails on wrong actions and data incidents.
### Follow-up Questions
- The client's order system has no API, only an internal admin screen. What are your options?
- The client changes its return policy. How does the AI pick that up, and how do you show it did?
- A second client in the same industry wants the same integration. What do you turn into product, and what stays custom?
Overview: A product design question about an AI system that connects to another company's data and works inside its existing workflows. It tests how you choose a concrete workflow, design connectors, permissions and policy controls, earn the client's trust on security, roll out safely, and measure deployment success.