Where every engagement starts
The AI Workflow Assessment
A fixed-scope review of how your business actually operates - what is worth automating, what has to be secured first, and what order to do it in. You leave with a CORE Score, a ranked opportunity register and a 90-day roadmap, whether or not you continue with us.
Why we start here
Almost every conversation we have opens with the same question in some form: everyone says we should be using AI somewhere - where? It is a genuinely hard question to answer from inside the business, because the people closest to the work are the ones who have stopped noticing how much of it is manual.
The assessment answers it with specifics: named workflows, ranked by what they cost you today and what they would take to change. It is deliberately the first thing we do, deliberately fixed in scope, and deliberately useful on its own. You should not have to commit to an ongoing relationship to find out where you stand.
It also covers the unglamorous half. Automation runs with your permissions, on your data - so before we recommend building anything, we check what it would be built on.
The CORE framework
Four dimensions, because they depend on each other.
CORE is our own methodology. Each dimension is scored on its own, but the roadmap comes from reading them together - an opportunity in Evolution is only actionable once Control can support it.
Control
What protects the business, and what only appears to.
- Identity and access: accounts, privileges, MFA, offboarding
- Microsoft 365 and cloud tenant configuration
- Endpoint, email and network protection
- Where customer and company data lives, and how it leaves
- AI governance: what tools are in use, on what data, under what policy
- Compliance obligations your contracts already carry
Operations
How work actually moves through the business, as opposed to how the process document says it does.
- The path a job, quote or request takes end to end
- Where work waits, repeats, or gets dropped
- Volume and time cost of recurring administrative tasks
- Systems in use, and the gaps people bridge by hand
- Work that depends on one person remembering
- Reporting: what leadership sees, and how late
Resilience
What happens on the day a system, a vendor or a person is unavailable.
- Backup coverage, retention and tested recovery
- Business continuity against the environment you actually run
- Incident readiness: who decides, who communicates
- Vendor and third-party dependencies and access
- Single points of failure across systems and people
- Documentation of the processes the business cannot stop doing
Evolution
Where AI and automation would genuinely pay back, and in what order.
- Candidate workflows ranked by volume, rules and cost of failure
- Integration opportunities between systems that do not talk
- Where AI agents fit, and where they clearly do not
- Data readiness for the workflows you want
- Build, buy, or leave alone - for each opportunity
- The 12-month technology roadmap this implies
Not every area applies to every business. Scope is confirmed with you in writing before the assessment begins, and CORE continues to evolve as we work with more businesses.
The CORE Score
One number per dimension, with the findings that produced it. Its job is not to grade you - it is to make an argument about sequence, and to give you something to measure against next year.
In practice the lowest dimension usually decides the first thirty days. A business scoring well on Control and poorly on Operations is ready to automate. The reverse means we secure the foundation before we build on it.
Sample output
CORE Score
54/100
Control
71
Security, identity, access, data protection, AI governance.
Operations
44
Processes, workflows, systems, bottlenecks, repetitive admin.
Resilience
63
Backup, continuity, documentation, vendor and key-person risk.
Evolution
38
AI opportunities, automation, integrations, technology roadmap.
Illustrative example, not a client result.
What you receive
Six deliverables, all of them yours to keep, share with your board, or hand to another provider.
01
CORE Score
A score across all four dimensions with the evidence behind each one. It is a baseline, not a grade - the point is to re-run it in a year and see the movement.
02
Automation opportunity register
Every workflow we found worth automating, with the volume it carries, what it would take to build, and what it currently costs you to keep doing by hand.
03
Risk findings
Technology, security and continuity gaps, each rated by consequence and effort - so the genuinely urgent is distinguishable from the merely untidy.
04
90-day roadmap
A sequenced plan naming what happens first, what it involves, roughly what it takes, and what the exposure is if you defer it.
05
ROI model
The payback case for the top opportunities, modelled on your volumes and your labour cost. Your numbers, not industry benchmarks.
06
Leadership readout
A working session to walk through the findings, argue with them, and agree what matters. This conversation is usually where the value actually lands.
How the engagement runs
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Discovery call
Thirty minutes to understand the business and confirm fit. If an assessment is not the right next step, we will say so on the call rather than after it.
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Scope and schedule
We agree scope, timing and a fixed fee in writing before anything begins. No open-ended discovery and no hourly drift.
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Assessment
Structured interviews with the people who actually run the work, plus a read-only review of your systems, vendors and existing documentation. Light on your team's calendar.
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Findings and roadmap
The written assessment, CORE Score and 90-day roadmap, delivered and walked through with leadership. What happens next is entirely your decision.
Find out whether an assessment fits your business.
A 30-minute call. No preparation needed, and no obligation to proceed.
Questions about the assessment
Why is it called a CORE Assessment and an AI Workflow Assessment?
How long does it take?
What does it cost?
How much of our team's time does it take?
Will it disrupt anything?
Do we have to work with you afterwards?
What if the answer is that we should not automate much?
Does this make us compliant?
Book the discovery call.
Thirty minutes with the people who would actually do the work.