AI Reviews

Stop guessing where
AI fits in your business

A prioritized plan for what your company should do about AI first, what can wait, and what to leave alone. Three ways in, depending on how deep you need to go.

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Why Start Here

Most AI projects start in the wrong place

They start wherever someone happened to get excited — a marketing tool, a chatbot, whatever a vendor demoed last month. That produces activity, not advantage.

The departmental trap

Solving one department's problem in isolation usually means buying a tool that doesn't connect to anything, duplicating data that already exists elsewhere, and discovering six months later that the real opportunity was somewhere else.

The alternative

Look at the business as a whole first. Find where the manual effort, the missing information, and the competitive pressure actually concentrate. Then go deep on the places that matter, knowing why they matter.

How I Look at a Business

Every business has two versions of itself

There's the business as leadership understands it — the workflows as designed, the systems as intended. And there's the business as it actually runs.

What leadership believes

What the business is trying to do, what's in the way, and what prompted the AI question. I get this from working sessions with you and your senior team, plus a review of your systems and how information moves between them.

What actually happens

The spreadsheet someone keeps because the report doesn't do what they need. The approval everyone routes around. The tool an employee started using without telling anyone. I get this by talking to the people doing the work.

Where the two versions differ is usually where the findings are — the real opportunities and the real risks both. Advice built on only the first version is how companies end up with software nobody uses and a plan nobody follows.

The two reviews differ in exactly this. The Leadership Review works from leadership's view and your systems. The Whole-Company Review adds interviews with the people doing the work.

Choose Your Depth

Three ways to start

They differ in one thing: how much of your business I look at before I tell you anything.

Option 01

AI Working Session

$995

About a week — two 45-minute sessions, with my analysis between them

Bring what you're actually trying to figure out. We work through it in an interview, I do the analysis, and you leave the debrief knowing what to do first.

Analysis between the two sessions

Specific direction on your first move

A written recap after the debrief

Answers: what do I do about this?

Book a Working Session

Books the first session. We schedule the debrief at the end of it.

Option 02

Leadership AI Review

$3,500

10 days to two weeks

Working sessions with your senior team, plus a review of your systems and how information moves between them.

Opportunity inventory across the company

A prioritized shortlist with the reasoning shown

First 30 and 90 day recommendations

Answers: where should we start?

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Option 03

Whole-Company AI Review

$7,500

Three to four weeks

Everything in the Leadership Review, plus structured interviews with the people doing the work across four to six functions.

Findings from the work itself, not just leadership's view

Full 30, 90, and 180 day roadmap

Training and responsible-use recommendations

Answers: what's the whole picture, in what order?

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Being Honest About the Working Session

Two conversations and the work between them can't look at either version of your business systematically. What they can do is apply more than 40 years of judgment to one well-defined question: an interview to find the real problem, a few days of my own analysis, and a debrief with a recommendation and the reasoning attached — which is often exactly enough. If your question needs a proper review to answer well, I'll tell you that in the first session rather than after you've paid for one.

You Don't Have to Choose Perfectly

Each step credits toward the next. The $995 working session credits in full toward either review within 90 days, and the $3,500 Leadership Review credits in full toward the Whole-Company Review on the same terms. Starting smaller costs you nothing but time.

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The Process

Defined before we start

This is the Whole-Company sequence. The Leadership Review follows the same path without week two, which is what compresses it to 10 days to two weeks.

Week 01

Preparation & Leadership

A short questionnaire establishes the facts — what software you run, what connects to what, where your data lives. Then working sessions with you and your senior team, spent on the things only they can tell me.

Week 02

Staff Interviews

Structured conversations with the people doing the work, in person or by video call. Each one gets a short set of questions a few days ahead, so they arrive having already thought about it. Whole-Company Review only.

Week 03

Analysis & Prioritization

No meetings. I build the opportunity inventory and rank it against business value, feasibility, cost, time to value, readiness, and risk — and flag where leadership's view and the staff's differed, which is often the most useful part of the report.

Week 04

Delivery & Working Session

You receive the written plan, then we sit down and work through it together — argue with it, adjust it, and agree what happens in the first 30 days.

What Both Reviews Examine

The business — leadership priorities, recurring workflows, where time and money go, competitive pressure

The people — how employees already use AI, whether anyone has told them what's acceptable, where the skill gaps sit

The systems — existing software and its AI capability, where your data lives, what needs protecting

What You Receive

A plan built to be used, not filed

The Written Plan

Prioritized and specific to your business:

Where AI could create the most value

What to pursue first, what to defer, what to avoid

Specific actions with time horizons

Which tool categories deserve evaluation, and on what criteria

Which opportunities should be tested with working software first

What I recommend against — and why

The Working Session

A plan nobody discusses is a plan nobody follows. We spend a session together going through it with your leadership — where you push back, where priorities shift once you see them ranked, and what the first thirty days actually look like.

You leave with agreement on the first move, not a document to circulate.

What the Plan Looks Like

A two-page sample of a Whole-Company Review roadmap, written for a fictional regional accounting and advisory firm. It is an illustrative composite — not a client deliverable and not a result — but it shows the shape of what you get: the ranked opportunities, the reasoning, and the 30/90/180-day sequence.

See a sample Whole-Company roadmap (illustrative, PDF)
And If You Want to See It Work

When a review identifies an opportunity worth testing, I can build a focused working application so you learn whether it delivers before committing to a larger investment. That's a separate, optional engagement — and it's the reason the recommendations stay grounded in what can actually be built.

Ken built the Demand Response Mobile App for Southern California Edison, 2019–2021.

“The app has grown to more than 50,000 downloads with over 35,000 active users, and it has become an important part of SCE's demand response program. For Southern California Edison, the DR Mobile App has been huge.”

Bob Gravley — Honeywell

About application development →
Fit

Who this is for

A good fit

Established businesses, roughly $1M to $20M in revenue

Companies with employees, real workflows, and operating complexity

Owners and senior leaders who can act on what the review finds

Sonoma, Napa, and Marin Counties

Probably not a fit

Startups looking for someone to build a product idea

Companies that already know exactly what they want built

Organizations wanting a document for a board rather than a plan to execute

Anyone looking for a specific vendor to be recommended

Getting Started

None of these start with a contract

They start with a conversation. If none of this is the right move for your company, I'll say so.

These prices are fixed for companies of up to 100 employees and up to six functions — which covers most of the businesses I work with. The Whole-Company Review includes the leadership sessions and up to twelve structured employee interviews across those functions. If yours is larger or more complex, you get a written quote before any work begins, and the credit ladder still applies.

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How It Starts

1. A complimentary 30-minute consultation, by video call or in person.

2. We talk through where your business stands and whether one of the reviews is worth doing.

3. My honest recommendation on which option fits, or whether you need one at all.

4. A written scope and fixed quote before anything begins.

Find out which of these fits your company.

Start with the survey and a complimentary 30-minute conversation about it. If the answer is none of them, I'll tell you that — and you'll still have the report.