Engagement ladder, rung 2

AI Readiness Assessment

Two to four weeks inside your operations, and a roadmap you could hand to anyone.

We map how your business actually runs, find where AI creates measurable value, and rank every opportunity by return and effort. You get a costed roadmap you own outright, not a slide deck of possibilities.

Schedule a Strategy Call

Fixed scope. Fixed fee. No obligation to build anything with us afterward.

Who is the AI Readiness Assessment for?

Owners, founders, and operations leaders who suspect AI could help their business but have no reliable way to separate the real opportunities from the noise, and who are not willing to fund a build on a hunch.

In practice, most of the businesses that start here have the same three symptoms. Somebody on the team has been experimenting with AI tools and getting interesting results that nobody can scale. A vendor has pitched something expensive that may or may not fit. And nobody in the building can say with any confidence which of the twenty possible things to do would pay back first.

The assessment exists to end that specific paralysis. It replaces twenty maybes with a ranked list, a number attached to the top few, and a written statement of what to leave alone.

What do you actually get?

A written roadmap you own, plus the analysis behind it. Everything below is a deliverable, not a talking point.

Workflow mapping across the operations we scope together

How work actually moves through your business, documented. Not the org chart, and not the process document nobody has updated since 2023.

Interviews with the people doing the work

Not only the people describing it. Those two groups rarely give the same answer, and the difference between them is usually where the opportunity is hiding.

Every use case scored by return, effort, and risk

One consistent scale applied to everything, so the comparison is real rather than a matter of who argued hardest for their idea.

A modeled ROI on the top recommendations

Return on investment built from your numbers and your assumptions, with the assumptions written down so you can argue with them. A model you cannot inspect is a guess wearing a suit.

A phased implementation roadmap with sequencing

What to do first, what to do next, what depends on what, and where the natural stopping points are if you want to pause.

A written statement of what is not worth automating, and why

Usually the most useful page in the document. It is also the page that tells you what kind of firm you hired.

A walkthrough session to hand it over

We take your team through the findings, answer the objections in the room, and leave the document with you.

The roadmap is yours. If you take it to another firm, or hand it to your own team, or put it in a drawer for six months, it still works. It was written to be read by someone who was not in the room.

How does the assessment work?

Four stages across two to four weeks, depending on how many operations we scope. You will know at the end of each stage what we found and what it changes.

01
Week 1: scoping and workflow mapping
We agree what is in scope and what is not, then map how work actually moves through those operations. Scope is set in writing before anything else starts, which is what makes the fee fixed.
02
Weeks 1 to 3: interviews
We talk to the people doing the work. This is the part that cannot be shortcut and the part that produces most of the findings. Expect us to ask your team what the annoying part of their week is, and to take the answer seriously.
03
Weeks 2 to 3: scoring and modeling
Every opportunity we found gets scored by return, effort, and risk. The top recommendations get a modeled return built from your own numbers, with every assumption stated.
04
Week 4: the roadmap and the walkthrough
We write the phased roadmap, including what not to pursue, and walk your team through it. Then it is yours.

What the assessment asks of your team

Roughly four to six hours of interview time spread across the people who do the work, access to the systems in scope so we can see how they are actually used, and one person empowered to answer scoping questions without a committee. That is the whole ask.

Is this the right fit?

Not every business should buy this yet. Here is how to tell.

Right for you if

You have real operations with repeatable processes, even if nobody has written them down
More than one person has suggested an AI idea and nobody can rank them
You are willing to have your team interviewed honestly, including about the parts that are inefficient
You want a decision document before you want a build
You would rather be told something is not worth doing than be sold it

Maybe not yet if

You already know exactly what you want built and just need someone to build it to your spec. That is a build conversation rather than a strategy one, and we will route you to CAL Design, our development and production partner, for it. We would only be charging you to confirm a decision you have already made.
Your leadership team has not agreed that AI is worth exploring at all. Start with the AI Leadership Workshop, which is designed for exactly that disagreement.
Your core business processes are actively being restructured. Map a moving target and the map is wrong before it is delivered. Come back when the dust settles.
Your problem is a single specific tool question, like whether to buy a particular piece of software. That is a conversation, not an engagement, and the strategy call will settle it in half an hour.
You want a guarantee of a specific dollar return before we have seen your operations. Nobody honest can give you that, and anyone who does is guessing.

If two or more of those apply, say so on the call. We would rather point you somewhere cheaper than sell you the wrong thing and spend four weeks proving it.

What does the engagement look like?

Fixed scope, fixed fee, defined deliverable, and no obligation afterward.

Duration	2 to 4 weeks, set by the number of operations in scope
Structure	Fixed scope and fixed fee, both agreed in writing before work starts
Your time	Roughly 4 to 6 hours of interviews, plus a scoping conversation and the final walkthrough
Deliverable	A written, phased roadmap with scored use cases, a modeled ROI on the top recommendations, and a statement of what not to pursue
What happens after	Nothing, unless you want it to. The roadmap stands alone.
Pricing	Quoted after scoping. We do not publish a number, because the honest one depends on scope.

An assessment that only makes sense as a step toward buying something else is a sales call with an invoice attached. This one is built to be worth the money if you never speak to us again, which is exactly why most clients do.

Questions about the assessment.

What does an AI readiness assessment include?

Workflow mapping across the operations we scope, interviews with the people doing the work, every opportunity scored by return, effort, and risk, a modeled return on the top recommendations, a phased implementation roadmap, a written statement of what is not worth automating, and a walkthrough session to hand it all over. It runs 2 to 4 weeks at a fixed scope and a fixed fee.

How long does an AI readiness assessment take?

Two to four weeks. The variable is how many operations you put in scope, which is agreed in writing before work starts. Your team's own time commitment is roughly four to six hours of interviews plus the final walkthrough.

Do we have to build with you afterward?

No. The roadmap is a standalone document that you own. You can implement it with your own team, take it to another firm, or shelve it. It was written to be read by someone who was not in the room, precisely so that stays possible.

What if the assessment finds that AI will not help us?

Then that is what the report says, and we will tell you before we finish rather than saving it for the last page. It has to be a real possible outcome for the exercise to be worth anything. An assessment that always recommends buying more is not an assessment.

How is this different from a free AI consultation?

A consultation is scoped to produce a proposal. An assessment is scoped to produce a decision document, and the two are not the same object. We will happily spend half an hour with you at no cost, because that half hour is how we both work out whether there is anything here. What we will not do is give away four weeks of interviews, scoring, and modeling, because a firm that does is being paid by whatever it recommends next.

Who needs to be involved from our side?

One person empowered to answer scoping questions without convening a committee, and access to the people who actually do the work in the operations we scope. Leadership sets the scope. The findings come from the floor.

Find out where AI pays in your business.

Bring us the list of things somebody has suggested and nobody has ranked. That is the raw material, and half an hour with it is usually enough for us to say whether an assessment is the right next step or whether something smaller would answer your question for less.