Diagnose your business.
Integrating AI requires more than a subscription. Is your company ready?
Most deployments fail. The companies that get it right take a pragmatic approach. Understand where you're at with a thorough audit of your systems, workflows, and employees.
Fixed fee · 2 weeks
The pain you know
Everyone wants an AI strategy. You don't want to guess.
The pressure to integrate modern technology and AI shows up everywhere: a customer asking whether you have AI capabilities, a competitor announcing one, your team asking what your plan is. The cost of doing nothing is real, and the cost of doing the wrong thing is worse. Investing in a platform nobody uses. Six months on a pilot that goes nowhere. You want a clear read on which investments would actually move the needle, before you commit the budget.
What it does
A two-week diagnostic that ends with a real answer.
The Audit is a fixed-scope diagnostic that ends with a real answer about where AI fits in your business.
A half-day leadership workshop
The executive team, the operators who own the workflows, and anyone else who needs to be in the room. We talk about where the business is going, the constraints (capital, regulatory, workforce, integration), and which outcomes matter most in the next 12 months.
Walkthroughs of three to five priority workflows
We sit with the operators who do the work, watch the actual flow, ask about the workarounds, and time the bottlenecks. The workflow walkthrough is where most of the real signal comes from.
A light review of existing systems and data sources
We confirm what's accessible, what's locked behind vendor APIs, what's clean enough to use, and what would need cleanup before it's useful. We validate that the opportunities we're recommending can actually be built.
Interviews with three to seven people across the business
The people who'd own the day-to-day if we shipped something. This is the Workforce-First piece in practice. The employees who'd use the system get to shape what we recommend.
Ranking, sequencing, and cost estimation
The outcome is three to five opportunities ranked by ROI, ordered by priority, and scoped with effort and cost estimates. The ranking considers technical feasibility, workforce readiness, data quality, and regulatory constraints, not just the dollar value.
How it works
Two weeks. Same shape, same cadence, every time.
Discovery
Kickoff and leadership workshop
The Databender meets your team, constraints are laid out, and the priority workflows are named.
Walkthroughs and interviews
We sit with the people doing the work in their actual environment. We watch the flow, time the bottlenecks, and ask the questions that only someone who's going to build something can ask.
Light systems and data review
We get read access where we can, screen-share sessions where we can't. We confirm what's accessible and where the data quality work would be if we shipped a build.
Analysis and report
Analysis
We rank the opportunities, model the effort and cost for each opportunity, sequence them, and stress-test the ranking against the constraints we discussed in week one.
Readout
The Databender guides the leadership team through the Audit report, receives immediate feedback, and updates the document accordingly. You leave with a printed, signed-off version of the Audit report and a scheduled follow-up conversation about the next steps.
The Audit report
The deliverable is the engagement.
A twenty- to thirty-page document along with a live presentation for the leadership team. Here's what's inside.
Table of contents
- 01
Executive summary
The board-ready version summarizes findings, recommendations, costs, and expected returns.
- 02
Workflow findings
The workflows we studied, with the current state mapped, the bottlenecks identified, the workforce impact characterized, and the data and system constraints listed.
- 03
Opportunity ranking
The AI opportunities are ranked, each with a description of the system's function, expected outcome, effort in weeks, build and monthly costs, workforce impact, data and integration needs, regulatory factors, and a confidence rating with assumptions.
- 04
Sequencing recommendation
Prioritize tasks: some depend on others (Foundation before Insights or Agents), while some are standalone wins that don't require earlier work. The order matters.
- 05
The won't-recommend list
The opportunities we reviewed but chose not to recommend, along with the reasons. If a vendor has already pitched you something we decided to pass on, this page explains why.
Pricing
The Standard Audit includes the kickoff, half-day leadership workshop, three workflow walkthroughs, four operator interviews, a light systems and data review, opportunity analysis, a half-day readout, and a 15-20 page Audit report.
Two other shapes, on request
Focused Audit
$4,750 · 1 weekFor teams that already have a strong hypothesis or want to audit a single workflow. One or two walkthroughs, two or three interviews, a light systems spot-check, two opportunities analyzed in depth, a 10-page report, and a one-hour Zoom readout. Best when you walk in knowing what you want to build and need it validated by an engineer who would actually build it.
Extended Audit
$16,000 · 2 weeksFor complex, multi-site, or heavily regulated organizations. Four to five workflow walkthroughs, five to seven operator interviews, a full systems and data review, four to five opportunities ranked, and a 20-30 page report with a full readout and revision cycle.
What happens next
The honest read, whatever it is.
Sometimes the Audit surfaces a bigger problem: data quality, poor systems integration, or a lack of workforce readiness.
The point of the Audit isn't to sell you the implementation. The point is to give you an honest read on where AI fits in your business right now, from a forward-deployed engineer who would actually build it.
Common Questions
FAQ
Stop guessing. Start building.
Imagine knowing exactly where it fits in your business, what to build first, and what it would cost.