Most companies do not need more AI ideas. They need to know which of the ideas they already have are useful, feasible and worth funding. The AI readiness workshop puts the right people in one room for a day, maps the processes that genuinely cost you something, and leaves you with a scored and prioritised roadmap rather than another round of enthusiasm.
Almost nobody arrives at this workshop short of ideas. What they are short of is a way to choose between them that survives a management meeting.
A full day, with the preparation done beforehand so the day itself is spent on work rather than on introductions.
Context gathered in advance, plus short input from the people attending, so the day starts from your reality instead of from a blank flipchart.
What actually happens in the areas under discussion, including the workarounds. This is where most of the real opportunities are found.
Structured and facilitated, with the people who do the work rather than only the people who manage it. Quantity first, judgement afterwards.
Each candidate assessed against business value, feasibility and dependency, in the room, with the disagreements aired rather than smoothed over.
A sequence, a named owner for each priority, and an agreed next action. Without this last step the day is entertainment.
Every idea gets the same three questions. It sounds obvious, and it is remarkable how rarely all three are asked of the same idea on the same day.
In money or in hours, estimated honestly with the assumptions written on the wall where everyone can argue with them. A use case whose value cannot be described is not ready to be funded.
Whether your data, systems, processes and people can support it as they are today, not in an idealised version of your company that exists in a slide.
Dependencies, approvals, risks and the order they impose. This is the question that reorders most lists, because the highest-value idea is frequently the one that has to wait.
The facilitation is the product. Anybody can run a brainstorm; the value is in the structure that turns forty ideas into six scored candidates and one agreed starting point, without the loudest person in the room deciding it.
Your operational people are in the room on purpose. Leadership knows where the strategy is going and the people doing the work know where the time actually disappears, and a use-case list built from only one of those two is reliably wrong.
The output is deliberately usable by somebody else. If you never speak to me again, the roadmap still works, because it was written for your team rather than as a pretext for the next engagement.
Named processes, named benefits and named owners, instead of a general intention to do something about AI this year.
The same three questions asked of every candidate, so choosing between them is a decision rather than a preference.
Data, process, tooling and ownership gaps written down, which turns the recurring objection into a work item with a cost attached.
Both were in the room when the list was scored, which removes an argument that would otherwise have taken months.
Whether the next step is an audit, a build or nothing at all, you can explain the reasoning to a board.
Every priority leaves the day owned by somebody, which is the difference between a roadmap and a souvenir.
Seventeen years of marketing and e-commerce work, and a practice that builds these things as well as discussing them. That shows up in the room as a fairly ruthless feasibility filter: it is much easier to say that an idea will not survive contact with your data when you have watched a similar one fail to.
There is no implementation contract waiting at the end of the day. Some priorities are best built in-house, some belong with your existing agency or IT partner, and some are worth nothing at all. The roadmap says which, and it says so before anybody has quoted for anything.
What is not on offer: a guarantee that a given use case will deliver a given return, or a scoring model dressed up as objectivity. The scores are structured judgement, made in the open, and your team is expected to argue with them.
A real client example belongs here: the ideas on the wall at the start of the day, the priority that came out on top, and what was actually built. Left empty on purpose rather than filled with an invented story.
A mix, and the mix is the point. Somebody from leadership who can commit budget, the managers of the areas being examined, and two or three people who do the work day to day. Eight to twelve is a comfortable number. A workshop attended only by management produces a list of things management wishes were true.
Very little is asked of you, deliberately. A short intake conversation, some context about the business, and brief written input from the participants about where their time actually goes. Everything else happens on the day. If preparing for a workshop becomes a project of its own, something has gone wrong.
No. It is conducted in business language and requires no technical knowledge from participants. Technical feasibility is assessed during the scoring, and where a genuine technical question arises it gets recorded as a dependency to be answered rather than debated on the spot by people who cannot answer it.
No, and keeping the two separate is intentional. The workshop produces a scored roadmap with owners and next actions. What happens afterwards is your decision: your own team, your existing partners, or a scoped implementation. There is no obligation in any direction, and the roadmap is written so somebody else can execute it.
The audit is an independent examination of your marketing and e-commerce operation, done by me, ending in evidence and a roadmap. The workshop is a facilitated day with your own people, covering whichever parts of the business you choose, ending in their conclusions rather than mine. The audit is broader on evidence; the workshop is broader on scope and much stronger on internal agreement. Companies with a marketing-shaped problem usually want the audit, and companies with a whole-business question usually want the workshop.
Request a call. Bring the ideas currently circulating in your business, and we will work out whether a workshop is the right way to sort them or whether you already know the answer.
Request a callA full day · your people in the room · a roadmap you own
