AI Strategy and Assessments
An AI strategy assessment answers one question: of everything you could automate, which single process should you do first, and what will it return? The output is a ranked shortlist with a cost against each candidate, including the candidates we recommend against.
Why the ranking is the deliverable
Most automation lists are generated by enthusiasm rather than arithmetic. The result is a first project chosen because it was interesting, which produces a system nobody uses and an organization that concludes AI does not work for them.
Ranking forces the uncomfortable questions early. How many hours does this take, measured rather than remembered? How often does it run? What does an error cost when it happens? Which of these processes is about to be replaced anyway? Several candidates usually fall out at this stage, and that is the assessment doing its job.
Build, buy, or leave it alone
All three are real answers. Hosted platforms earn their price when a workload is small and irregular, and stop earning it when the workload is steady, growing, and billed by the operation. On one engagement we treated the question as a build versus buy decision rather than a migration task, and self hosting won on cost and speed for that specific workload. That conclusion does not transfer. It came from that workload’s volume and shape, which is exactly why the analysis has to be run against yours.
You can start without us
The ROI calculator takes four inputs and estimates what a repetitive task costs you over a year, with every assumption on the page so you can argue with it. It is deliberately conservative. If it tells you the number is small, believe it.
What this is not
It is not a technology recommendation dressed as advice, and it is not a roadmap that assumes the answer is yes. If the honest finding is that your processes are not ready, or that the cheaper fix is to remove a step rather than automate it, that is what the document will say.
The problem
You have a list of things AI could do for the business and no reliable way to tell which one pays for itself first, or whether any of them do.
The outcome
A ranked shortlist that says what each process costs you today, what automating it would take, and what to do first.
What you get
- A process inventory: what runs manually today, how often, and how many hours it consumes
- A cost estimate per process, built from your numbers rather than industry averages
- A ranked shortlist with the payback case for each candidate, and the ones not worth doing
- Build versus buy analysis for each candidate, including staying with what you have
- A sequenced roadmap, so the first project is the one that funds the next
- The risks written down: what could fail, what it would cost, and what would have to be true
How the work runs
Diagnose
Quantify
Rank and rule out
Sequence the roadmap
Related work
Questions about this service
What do we get at the end of an assessment?
A ranked shortlist with a cost attached to each item, and a written case for the order. For every candidate you get what the process costs today, what automating it would involve, what could go wrong, and whether building, buying, or leaving it alone is the better call. The deliverable is a decision document, not a slide deck.
What if the answer is that we should not automate anything?
Then that is the finding, and it is worth knowing before you spend a budget. Some processes run too rarely to justify the build. Some are about to change and would be automated twice. Some are cheaper to fix by removing a step than by automating the step. A consultant who never recommends doing nothing is not assessing anything.
Can we estimate this ourselves before talking to you?
Yes, and you should. The ROI calculator on this site takes four inputs and returns an estimate of what a repetitive task is costing you annually, with every assumption listed so you can check it. If the number is small, you have saved yourself a conversation. If it is large, you have a starting point for one.
How is this different from a vendor telling us what to buy?
The recommendation can be to buy, to build, or to stay where you are, and we have made all three calls. On one engagement the analysis was explicitly a build versus buy decision rather than a migration task, and the hosted platform lost on cost and speed for that specific workload. On a different workload it would have won. The point of the assessment is that the answer comes from your numbers.
Not sure which of these you need?
That is the usual starting point, and it is what the assessment is for. Tell us which process is costing you the most time and we will tell you whether it is worth automating.