Consulting Desk · AI Readiness Assessment
Can this organisation
support the AI it wants?
Scored against the use case.
Data reachable in the form a model needs it. Tooling. Skills. And the governance to approve something — and to stop it. Scored against what your candidate use cases actually require, because a business can be ready for one and nowhere near ready for the next.
You hold: readiness findings by domain, the specific gaps blocking your top use cases and a remediation sequence, ordered by what unblocks what.
Why a ladder is the wrong instrument
Readiness is not a level. It is a question about a specific use case.
Generic maturity models produce a number between one and five and a recommendation to move up. That is useless for a decision, because an organisation can be entirely ready to run a document-triage assistant and nowhere near ready to let a model touch a pricing decision. Same firm, same week, opposite answers.
So we score readiness against your candidate use cases. For each one: is the data it needs reachable, current and in a form a model can consume? Does the tooling exist, or is it a procurement exercise you have not started? Do the people who would operate it have the skills, and if not, is that training or hiring? And critically — is there a governance route that can approve it, and one that can stop it after it goes live?
Every finding names a system and an owner. A readiness gap without an owner is a paragraph; with an owner it is a task someone can be asked about next month.
The gap most firms miss
The governance one. Organisations routinely find they can build a thing and have no mechanism to approve it — or worse, no mechanism to stop it once it is running. That gap blocks more AI programmes in regulated firms than data quality does.
How it runs
Scored against the use case, not a ladder.
Four domains, assessed against your specific candidates, with the blocking gaps sequenced into a remediation order.
- EngagementAdvisory Sprint — 2–3 weeks
- MethodScored against the use case, not a ladder
- GateEvery finding names a system and an owner
- DomainsData, tooling, skills, governance
- Ends inA remediation sequence with named owners
Start from the candidates
Which use cases are we assessing readiness for. Without that the exercise has no scale. If there is no candidate list yet, an opportunity assessment comes first.
Data, traced to source
Not “do you have a data warehouse”. Can the specific fields this case needs be reached, are they current, and is anyone accountable for their quality when they are wrong.
Tooling and skills, honestly
What exists, what is licensed but unused, what would be a procurement exercise, and whether the people who would run it can. Hiring and training are different answers with different lead times.
Governance, both directions
Who can approve this going live, and who can stop it afterwards. Both have to exist. A route that only goes one way is the gap that bites later.
A remediation sequence
The gaps blocking your top cases, in the order they have to be cleared, each with a named owner. Not a list of everything that could be better.
The two lists that matter
What you hold, and what we will not do.
Both are in the engagement letter before you sign it. The second list is the one worth reading twice — it is where most disappointment in this market actually comes from.
What you hold at the end
- Readiness findings by domain, each naming a system and an owner
- The specific gaps blocking your top use cases — not a general improvement list
- A remediation sequence, ordered by what unblocks what
- An honest read on which candidates are ready now and which are not
- The governance gaps in both directions — approving and stopping
What we won’t do
- Maturity scores with no evidence behind the number
- Assessments against a ladder rather than against your use cases
- Findings with no named system and no named owner
- Reviews where we cannot talk to the people doing the work
- Remediation plans that are really a shopping list
The pairing that answers most first questions
Opportunity says what is worth doing. Readiness says what you can actually do.
Run alone, either can mislead. Run together in one Advisory Sprint, they produce a shortlist that is both valuable and achievable — which is usually the shortest route to a defensible first decision.
Then the roadmap →Where the estate comes in
Readiness assumes you know what you already run. Often nobody does. The AI Estate Review establishes that, and the count is usually wrong in both directions.
Before you commit
Readiness is about a use case, not a score out of five.
Is this a maturity score?
No. Readiness is a question about a specific use case, not a level an organisation sits at. You hold findings by domain, each naming a system and an owner, and the gaps blocking the use cases you actually want.
What if we are not ready for anything yet?
Then the output is a remediation sequence ordered by what unblocks what. That completes the engagement, and it is a better outcome than a build that stalls in month three.
Who do you need access to?
The people doing the work, not only the sponsors. That access is a condition of the engagement, because the gap between how a process is described upstairs and how it runs downstairs is usually where the finding is.
Find out whether you can support it yet.
Thirty minutes with a founder. No sales deck, NDA available beforehand. If the honest answer is that you are not ready for the thing you are planning, we would rather tell you now.
Fixed fee · Quoted in writing before we start · NDA available