Guide · Updated October 2026
AI readiness
assessment
Ten statements across processes, data, tools, people and risk. Score yourself in under an hour and find the right first AI project, or the gaps to close first.
Guide · Updated October 2026
Ten statements across processes, data, tools, people and risk. Score yourself in under an hour and find the right first AI project, or the gaps to close first.
This is a self-assessment for small and mid-size businesses. It is not a compliance audit. Use it to decide where to start, not to prove you are "ready".
Most AI projects that stall do so for ordinary reasons: the process was never written down, the data was in five spreadsheets, or nobody owned the result. A short assessment finds those gaps before you spend money on tools.
Give each statement 0 (no), 1 (partly) or 2 (yes).
| Area | Statement |
|---|---|
| Processes | We have a list of our top 10 repeat tasks with hours per week. |
| Processes | At least three of those tasks are written down step by step. |
| Data | Customer and lead data lives in one system, not scattered spreadsheets. |
| Data | We could export that data today if we needed to. |
| Tools | Our CRM, email and accounting tools have integrations or an API. |
| Tools | The team uses one approved AI assistant on a business plan. |
| People | One named person owns AI projects and has time for them. |
| People | The people who do the work have been asked what slows them down. |
| Risk | We have a written rule on what data may go into AI tools. |
| Risk | A person reviews anything AI sends to customers, at least at first. |
None of these is a reason to give up. Each is a fix that usually takes weeks, not months, and it makes any AI project that follows much cheaper.
To show how scoring works, take an illustrative company that tracks leads in a CRM but quotes jobs from spreadsheets, uses personal ChatGPT accounts and has no data rule. It might score 2 on processes, 2 on data, 3 on tools, 2 on people and 0 on risk, for 9 in total. That puts it in "ready for a first project", with two fixes to make alongside it: one approved assistant on a business plan and a one-page data rule. The first project would be the highest-hour task that already lives in the CRM, such as following up on new leads, rather than quoting, which still depends on spreadsheets.
Rank candidate tasks by hours saved per month, then by how easy they are to connect and how low the risk is if the AI gets something wrong. The best first project is boring, frequent and easy to check. Good examples: replying to new leads within minutes, sorting a shared inbox, or moving form data into your CRM.
If you want an outside view, our AI consulting starts with this kind of assessment and ends with a written roadmap: which tasks to automate first, what each would cost, and what to leave alone. When you are ready to build, see AI automation, or start with ChatGPT for small business.
FAQs
A short review of your processes, data, tools, people and risk controls to find out whether AI can help now, and where to start first.
A self-assessment like this one takes under an hour. A guided assessment with interviews and a written roadmap usually takes one to three weeks for a small business.
Not perfect data, but the data a task needs should be in one place and reasonably current. Many first projects work with the email and CRM data you already have.
A frequent, low-risk, easy-to-check task: lead follow-up, inbox sorting, data entry between tools or drafting routine replies for a person to approve.
Send us your answers. We will tell you where to start and what a first project would cost, in writing.
Ask us