Know exactly where you stand before you spend a dollar on AI.
A 40-point readiness audit across eight dimensions, a 12-point cost guardrail review, and an executive interview that scopes one priority bottleneck into something you can actually start. Then, if it's worth building, fractional AI leadership to see it through.
AI Readiness Assessment Report
Four levels. You only climb when the one below has earned it.
Most companies don't need another AI strategy presentation. They need someone who can look at the business, find where AI actually helps, calculate the opportunity in dollars, and guide the team through it. That starts with a conversation, not a contract.
Discovery Call
A low-key conversation. We get to know you and the business, talk through what's actually slowing you down, and give you our initial findings. No scoring, no report, no pitch, just something useful in exchange for your time.
AI Audit & Readiness Assessment
The deep one. Forty readiness items scored across eight dimensions, twelve cost guardrails reviewed, an executive and IT interview, and one priority bottleneck scoped into a starting point you can act on.
Fractional AI Officer
Ongoing executive AI leadership inside your regular workflow. Two working sessions a month, continuous audit-optimize-automate reviews, vendor guidance, and a roadmap that stays current.
FAIO Executive
Embedded leadership, one to three days a week, across departments. For organizations that need a Chief AI Officer's judgment without hiring one.
Forty items. Eight dimensions. One honest score.
Every dimension is scored against what's actually in place, not what's planned. Each one comes back with a written recommendation specific to your gaps, and specific to how equipment companies actually operate. Most of what we find are operational gaps, not technical ones, which means they close in weeks rather than months.
- Executive leadership supports AI initiatives
- Clear business objectives are defined
- Cross-department collaboration supported
- AI understood as augmenting, not replacing
- Leadership committed to data quality
- Core operational systems identified
- ERP and CRM systems documented
- Finance / loan management documented
- Document repositories identified
- Data owners assigned per system
- Database structures documented
- Primary identifiers exist across systems
- Data formats known (SQL, API, PDF)
- Duplicate records identified
- Secure access methods available
- Hosting environment identified
- Ability to deploy cloud if required
- VPS or cloud infrastructure available
- Compute and storage needs understood
- Data access policies defined
- Role-based access control established
- Secure authentication in place
- IT or security leadership involved
- Encryption policies understood
- Regulatory requirements identified
- Budget awareness for infrastructure
- Token-based model usage understood
- Consumption pricing models understood
- Budget planning for integration work
- A designated AI champion selected
- Champion understands core workflows
- Champion can coordinate departments
- Leadership supports upskilling
- Employees encouraged to adopt tools
- Core systems documented
- Data access methods prepared
- Infrastructure environment identified
- Security policies reviewed
- Budget awareness established
- Internal champion assigned
Cost surprises are the number one reason AI pilots get cancelled after 90 days.
Every unchecked item below is a potential cost leak. These twelve guardrails are the difference between controlled scaling and runaway spend, and almost nobody checks them before they start. In our experience most companies score zero here on day one, including companies that are otherwise ready to build.
GPU Utilization
Reserved instances running above 60% average utilization, not paying for idle capacity.
Idling Audit
Compute scheduled off during non-peak hours for non-essential tasks.
Egress & Storage
Hidden fees for moving datasets between providers or into vector databases identified.
Input / Output Ratio
Output tokens cost 3-10× more than input. Calculated for your most-used prompts.
Prompt Efficiency
Golden prompts minimize token waste instead of massive redundant context windows.
Caching Strategy
Semantic caching for repeated queries, so you're not paying twice for the same response.
Data Prep Debt
You know what share of AI budget goes to cleaning old data versus generating new value.
Human-in-the-Loop Costs
You track the fully loaded hourly cost of staff reviewing AI output before production.
Shadow AI Tracking
A complete list of AI subscriptions exists, including departmental cards outside IT.
Labor Redeployment Plan
For every hour AI saves, a documented plan for how that labor generates new value.
Accuracy-to-Cost Mapping
Not using a premium model where a cheaper one delivers equivalent accuracy.
Budget Visibility
A dashboard tracks AI spend by department, feature, and team in real time, not at invoice time.
The questions that find the bottleneck worth fixing.
Scoring tells you where you stand. The interview tells you where to start. We sit with executives and IT and work through the operational reality, how decisions actually get made, which systems hold your data hostage, and what you wish you had on your desk on Monday morning. These are real questions from a recent dealer engagement.
Which one you need depends on what you're trying to find out.
People assume one is a cheaper version of the other. They aren't. They answer different questions, and plenty of companies buy both, readiness first, then the commercial deep dive once they've decided to build something.
Looks inward. A structured, repeatable diagnostic of your data, systems, security, cost discipline, and whether you have someone who can carry an AI project. It tells you what has to be true before anything gets built.
- 40-point readiness score across 8 dimensions
- 12-point cost guardrail review
- Executive and IT discovery interview
- One priority bottleneck scoped
- 90-day action roadmap
Looks outward. Two weeks of structured interviews across marketing, national accounts, product support, telematics, and engineering, producing the commercial understanding a system has to be built on. This is the one that becomes a pilot.
- Ideal customer profile and account tiering
- Competitive positioning and messaging themes
- Claims your engineering team will actually approve
- Campaign concepts built on real market grievances
- Per-function go-to-market plans
Choose your level of AI support.
Each level includes everything below it. Start with the free conversation and move up only when the level you're on has proven its value.
Discovery Call
- Low-key conversation, no pitch
- We get to know you and the business
- Talk through what's actually slowing you down
- Initial findings shared on the call
- An honest view on whether to go further
- Recommended next step
AI Audit & Readiness Assessment
- Everything in the discovery call
- 40-point readiness audit, 8 dimensions
- Written recommendation for every gap
- 12-point cost guardrail review
- Executive and IT discovery interview
- One priority bottleneck scoped
- Operational AI deep dive, where to start
- Effort vs. impact scoring
- Initial ROI calculations
- Recommended tools and workflows
- 90-day action roadmap
Fractional AI Officer: Concierge
- Everything in Plans 1-2
- Two 45-minute FAIO sessions monthly
- Ongoing audit → optimize → automate reviews
- Process simplification before automation
- AI workflow and agent recommendations
- ROI modeling and prioritization
- AI tool and vendor guidance
- AI governance guidance
- Employee adoption guidance
- Unlimited async messaging access
FAIO Executive
- Everything in Plans 1-3
- Embedded Fractional AI Officer
- Leadership meeting participation
- 12-24 month AI strategy
- Cross-department AI roadmap
- Vendor and technology governance
- Agent and workflow portfolio management
- Internal AI champion development
- Executive and board reporting
- Risk and governance framework
- Quarterly AI ROI review
Scroll horizontally to compare all four plans.
| Feature | Discovery Call | Audit & Readiness | FAIO Concierge | FAIO Executive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Investment | Free | $1,500 | $2,500/mo | Custom |
| Executive conversation | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Initial findings | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| 40-point readiness score | Not included | Included | Included | Included |
| 12-point cost guardrail review | Not included | Included | Included | Included |
| Executive & IT interview | Not included | Included | Included | Included |
| Priority bottleneck scoped | Not included | Included | Included | Included |
| 90-day roadmap | Not included | Included | Included | Included |
| Ongoing monthly sessions | Not included | Not included | Included | Included |
| Vendor & governance guidance | Not included | Not included | Included | Included |
| Embedded leadership presence | Not included | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Board reporting & risk framework | Not included | Not included | Not included | Included |
The standard we apply to every opportunity.
If a $250/hour executive spends five hours a week on repetitive email and administrative work, that costs roughly $1,250 a week. Reduce five hours to one and AI returns about 200 executive hours a year to higher-value work.
If an opportunity can't be written in that form, it isn't ready to automate, and we'll tell you so.
Based on 52 weeks per year. Estimates update as you type.
Start small. Prove value. Scale.
Have the conversation
A free call. Not a transformation exercise, we get to know the business and give you our initial read on where the value is.
Get the real picture
The audit scores 40 readiness items and 12 cost guardrails, then the interview finds the one bottleneck worth fixing first.
Build an operating rhythm
Your Fractional AI Officer keeps leadership auditing, optimizing, and automating, every initiative tied to a measurable outcome.
Implement what works
When something needs automation, agents, or custom development, we scope the implementation separately.
Strategy and implementation stay connected, without turning every advisory engagement into an open-ended technology project.
$250K-$400K+ per year
- Base salary before benefits or equity
- Full-time organizational commitment
- Long recruiting and onboarding cycle
- Fixed cost regardless of workload
- Hard to find with equipment-industry depth
From $2,500 per month
- Start free, scale only when it's earning
- Industry-specific guidance from day one
- No full-time executive hire required
- Support scales up or down with need
- Built by people who have run equipment businesses
AI advice from people who understand the business.
We focus on the operating environments we already know.
Twenty minutes. No pitch. You leave with something useful.
We get to know you and the business, talk through what's actually slowing you down, and share our initial findings. If AI isn't the right tool for the problem you bring us, we'll say so on the call.