AI assessment

Find out where you really stand before you spend on AI.

In three to four weeks, we assess your organization across ten areas of AI readiness, find the AI already in use, surface the security and governance gaps, and hand leadership a clear picture of what to do in the next 90 days.

How ready are you? A 60-second check.Not a substitute for the full assessment
  • Leadership & StrategyAgreed AI goals and a named owner?
  • Culture & ChangeDo incentives reward working with AI?
  • Talent & SkillsTeams trained to use and check AI?
  • Data ReadinessKey data organized and trustworthy?
  • Governance, Risk & SecurityAI policy and security controls in place?
  • Business ProcessesCore workflows documented and measured?
  • Industry Use CasesAI already delivering results?
  • Integration & TechnologyCan core systems connect to AI?
  • Investment & ValueAI budget, with benefits tracked?
  • Clients, Market & Business ModelClear on AI's effect on pricing and clients?
Answer the ten questions to see your profile.
Want a sharper read? Take the 10-question readiness check for your industry →
Assessments for
Why assess first

Most organizations overestimate their readiness in some places and underestimate their risk in others.

Leadership often believes the data is in better shape than it is, and that nobody is using AI yet. In practice, staff have been using consumer tools for months, and the data a promising initiative depends on is spread across systems that don't talk to each other.

Starting a pilot without knowing this is how budgets disappear. An assessment costs a fraction of a failed project and tells you which problems to fix first.

It also gives you a baseline, so a year from now you can show the partners, the board, or your investors how far you've come.

What an assessment answers
Where is AI already being used, and with what data?
Which of our systems and data could support AI today?
What would a regulator, client, or auditor find?
What should we do in the next 90 days?
What we assess

Ten areas, each scored on evidence.

Each area receives a readiness score from interviews, a short survey, and a review of your systems, policies, and data.

AreaWhat we examineWhat we often find
Leadership & Strategy
Leadership goals, sponsorship, priorities, and how AI decisions get made.
Enthusiasm at the top, but no owner and no agreed measure of success.
Culture & Change
Appetite for change, incentives, and how teams share what works.
Real interest from staff, but incentives, such as the billable hour, that quietly work against efficiency.
Talent & Skills
Skills, training, specialist roles, and where the day-to-day burden really falls.
Uneven skills and fear that goes unaddressed without a clear plan.
Data Readiness
Where key data lives, its quality, ownership, and who can access it.
Valuable data locked in documents, email, and legacy systems, with inconsistent naming and no owner.
Governance, Risk & Security
AI policy, approved tools, data handling, oversight, client or patient disclosure, and security controls aligned to NIST CSF 2.0.
No policy people follow, staff using consumer AI with sensitive information, and access gaps AI tools would make worse.
Business Processes
How core workflows are documented and measured, and where time is lost.
Key workflows that live in people's heads, with no baseline to measure improvement against.
Industry Use Cases
Where AI is already used in your core work, and where it would add the most value.
Pilots that never scaled, and high-value use cases nobody has tried.
Integration & Technology
Core platforms, integrations, APIs, and the AI features vendors have already added.
AI capabilities already licensed in existing tools that nobody has switched on or reviewed.
Investment & Value
AI budget, business cases, total cost of ownership, and whether benefits are measured.
Licenses bought without a business case, and no way to show what they returned.
Clients, Market & Business Model
Client expectations, pricing, competitive pressure, and new AI-enabled services.
No position on how AI changes pricing, and client questions about AI answered case by case.
How it runs

Three to four weeks, with little disruption.

Most people give us an hour at most. Select a stage to see what happens.

Agree on scope and who we should hear from.

We meet with your sponsor to confirm goals, scope, and the people and systems in view. We sign a confidentiality agreement, and a business associate agreement where patient data is involved.

What you get: a confirmed scope, an interview schedule, and a document request list.
  • Goals and scope confirmed with the sponsor
  • Interviewee list across roles and levels
  • System and document request list
  • Survey tailored to your organization
  • Confidentiality and data handling agreed
What you receive

Findings you can act on the following Monday.

Written for leadership, with enough detail for the people who will fix things.

  1. Readiness scorecard

    A score for each of the ten areas, with the evidence behind it and a baseline to measure progress against.

    For leadership
  2. AI in use inventory

    Every AI tool and feature in use across the organization, approved or not, and what data it touches.

    For risk and IT
  3. Security and governance findings

    Gaps ranked by severity, with a clear fix for each.

    For compliance
  4. Top opportunities

    The highest-value places to apply AI, including quick wins you can start now.

    For operations
  5. 90-day action plan

    What to do first, who owns it, and what it will take.

    For everyone
Tailored by industry

Same ten areas. Different rules for each industry.

Law firms

Governance findings mapped to the ABA Model Rules and Formal Opinion 512, plus client consent and outside counsel guidelines.

See the law firms page

Accounting firms

Client confidentiality, tax return information rules, and audit independence considered alongside every opportunity.

See the accounting firms page

Family offices

An entity and data map, plus the principals' personal digital exposure and wire fraud defenses.

See the family offices page

Private equity

Run on one company or across the portfolio, with findings framed for diligence, value creation, and exit.

See the private equity page

Healthcare

An AI-inclusive HIPAA security risk review, business associate agreement check, and PHI data flow map.

See the healthcare page
What comes next

The assessment tells you where to start.

Many clients go straight from the readout into one of these. Some take the plan and run with it themselves.

Assess

AI assessment

Know where you stand and what to fix first.

You are here
Decide

AI strategy and roadmap

Turn findings into a funded 12 to 18 month plan.

Explore strategy
Govern

GovernanceLift™

Close the policy and control gaps the assessment found.

Explore governance
Build

Implementation

Start with the quick wins and prove the value.

Explore implementation
Choose your scope

Three sizes of assessment.

FocusedAbout 2 weeks

One team or practice group

A single department, practice group, or site. The right choice when you want to test the waters or have a specific use case in mind.

Discuss a focused assessment
Organization-wide3–4 weeks

The whole organization

All ten areas across the organization, with the full report, scorecard, and 90-day plan. Our most common engagement.

Request an assessment
PortfolioScoped to the fund

Several companies at once

For PE sponsors and multi-entity owners: a consistent assessment across companies, with a portfolio-level comparison.

Discuss a portfolio assessment
Common questions

What people ask before they start.

Have a question that isn't here? Call us at 347 674-1471.

How is this different from your AI strategy engagement?
The assessment tells you where you stand and what to do in the next 90 days. The strategy engagement builds on it to produce a prioritized 12 to 18 month roadmap with budgets and owners. Many clients start with the assessment and decide afterward whether they need the full strategy.
How much of our staff's time does it take?
Interviewees usually spend 45 to 60 minutes with us, the wider organization spends about ten minutes on a survey, and your sponsor joins a few short check-ins. Your IT lead or provider helps us access systems and settings.
Will you need access to confidential client or patient data?
Rarely. We review systems, settings, and policies, not the contents of client files or patient records. When sensitive data must be reviewed, we sign the appropriate agreements first and follow your data handling rules.
What if we find people are already using AI without approval?
That's common and useful to know. We report it without naming individuals and focus on what the organization needs to put in place, not on blame.
Is this a sales pitch for more work?
No. You keep every document, and the 90-day plan is written so your own team or another partner can carry it out. If the right answer is to wait, we'll say so.

Know where you stand in a month.

Tell us about your organization and we'll recommend the right scope, from a single team to the whole firm or portfolio.

Request an assessmentSee all services