The AI Discovery Audit is a two-week, fixed-price assessment that measures where your staff time is going and ranks AI opportunities by payback. The outcome is a written recommendation document and a fixed-price quote for the first build. The audit is the entry point for every other engagement we offer, and it is useful as a standalone deliverable even if you decide not to proceed, because the baseline it produces is yours to keep.
It exists to answer the question every later decision depends on: of everything AI could do for your business, what is actually worth doing first? Most businesses can list several places AI might help. Far fewer can say which one returns the most for the least effort. The audit settles that with measurement rather than opinion.
Price: GBP 1,000, fixed, delivered in around two weeks. All prices exclude VAT. If the audit leads to a Proof of Concept or a larger build commissioned within 90 days, 50 per cent of the audit fee is credited against that engagement, so the assessment is effectively halved for clients who proceed.
What you get
The audit produces five deliverables, each of which is concrete and yours to keep.
A process map of the workflows you nominate, showing the steps, the people involved, the systems touched, and where time and effort accumulate. A time-and-cost baseline that puts an hours figure and a loaded-cost figure against each candidate process today, so you have a real number to measure any future improvement against. A ranked opportunity list ordering the candidate processes by estimated payback, so the highest-return work is obvious. A written recommendation document setting out which processes are worth automating, in what order, and why, including any data-quality or compliance issues to address first. And a fixed-price quote for building the first recommended solution, so you can move straight to a build with no further scoping if you choose to.
How it works
The audit runs over two weeks and is designed to take very little of your team's time.
In the first few days we run short workshops with the people who actually do the work, not just the leadership team, because the people doing a task daily know where the friction really sits. In parallel, we analyse the systems and data involved, looking at how information moves between tools and where it is rekeyed, delayed, or lost. We then build the time-and-cost baseline and rank the opportunities. At the end of the two weeks we deliver the written recommendation document and present it back to you, walking through the ranked list and answering questions, so you leave with a clear view of what to do next and what it will cost.
You do not need any technical knowledge to take part. You need to be able to describe how your business works today and give us access to the people who run the processes.
A worked example of the output
The core of the recommendation document is a ranked opportunity table. Without naming any client, the structure looks like this:
| Process | Time today (hrs/week) | Loaded cost/year | AI fit | Est. payback | Priority | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Invoice processing | High | Material recurring cost | Strong, well-defined inputs | Fastest | 1 | | Lead qualification and routing | Medium | Moderate, plus lost-lead risk | Strong | Fast | 2 | | Report generation | Medium | Moderate | Good | Medium | 3 | | Bespoke case handling | Variable | High but irregular | Partial, needs human judgement | Slower | Hold |
Each row carries the measured figures specific to your business in place of the descriptors above, a short note on how good a fit the process is for current AI, and a recommendation. The pattern that almost always emerges is that the highest-return automations are the unglamorous, repetitive, well-defined ones, invoice processing, data entry, approval routing, rather than the ambitious ideas a business reaches for first. The audit's job is to show you that on paper, with measured figures from your own business.
Who it suits, and who it does not
The audit suits any Greater Manchester SME that knows AI could help somewhere but cannot say with confidence where the highest return is, or that is weighing several ideas against each other and wants the argument settled with numbers. It also suits a business that has been quoted for an AI build by someone else and wants an independent, measured view of whether that is the right first move.
It is less useful in two cases. If you already have a single, clearly defined process you are certain you want to automate, and you simply want it built, you can often go straight to a Proof of Concept and we will fold a short scoping step into that. And if your aim is to upskill your team rather than build anything, AI Training is the better and cheaper starting point. We will tell you honestly in the free initial call if the audit is not the right first step for you.
What happens after the audit
There is no obligation to do anything after the audit, and "do nothing for now" is a valid and common outcome. The point of the audit is to give you an evidence-based decision, not to funnel you into a build.
Where clients do proceed, it is usually into one of a few routes. A Proof of Concept on the single highest-return process is the most common, building one solution into live use to prove the business case before spending more, through AI Workflow Automation, Chatbot and Voice AI, or AI Marketing Automation. Some clients start with AI Training because the audit shows the fastest win is a more capable team. Others take the recommendation document away and act on parts of it themselves. All of these are fine. Where you do commission a Proof of Concept or larger build within 90 days, 50 per cent of the audit fee is credited against it. The way we work is described in full on our how we work page, and indicative figures for the next steps are on the pricing page.