The AI Opportunity Workshop
Before you build AI, find out where it actually pays.
The expensive decision in an AI project isn’t which tool. It’s which problem you point AI at.
Most businesses have several candidates, no figures behind any of them, and no way to rank them. The workshop is a day spent establishing that ranking on one agreed area of your operation — what’s worth building, what it’s worth, and what to build first.
The call is free and decides whether a workshop is your right first step. Sometimes it isn’t.
Before the workshop
Where should AI go first?
- Quoting Unranked
- Client onboarding Unranked
- Reporting Unranked
- Client questions Unranked
- Document handling Unranked
Five plausible answers, and no way to choose between them.
Getting the problem statement right is the work.
Almost every business can list things AI might improve. Very few can say which one is costing them most, and almost none have measured it. That gap is where AI budgets go to the wrong place — a system that works exactly as specified, running on a process that was never the expensive one. The build is rarely the risk. The problem statement is.
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A list is not a decision.
Quoting, onboarding, reporting, client questions, document handling — all plausible, none obviously first. Ranked by opinion, they produce the same discussion every quarter and no build.
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Nothing has been measured.
What each candidate actually costs you — in time, delay, rework and capacity — is rarely known. Without those figures there's no basis for choosing, and no way to judge afterwards whether the build was worth what it cost.
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Not every candidate is an AI problem.
Some need a process change, or better use of software you already license. Establishing which is which before a budget is committed is worth more than the day costs.
Finding the right problem, putting a figure against it, and knowing what AI can genuinely do about it today — that’s the work we do on the day. What you’re buying is the decision, made on evidence.
If you can already name the one thing you’d fix, you don’t need a workshop. Say so on the call and we’ll go straight to discovery.
A day with your team, on your workflows.
We spend the day with the people who actually do the work, not only the people who describe it. We follow real workflows end to end, establish where time and money go, and test each candidate against what AI can genuinely do today.
What a day covers
A day covers one area of a business, not all of it. Before booking, we agree which area and roughly how many workflows are in scope — client intake, month-end, quoting, whatever is costing you most. A larger operation, or several departments, needs more than a day, and we’ll tell you that on the call rather than halfway through.
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We map the work as it runs.
Who touches each process, how often, and where it waits. Delay accounts for most of the cost in most workflows and appears in nobody's budget.
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We put figures against each candidate.
Built from your numbers, with every assumption stated openly so you can challenge it.
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We test what AI actually does.
Some candidates are AI problems. Others need a process change or better use of software you already license. We separate them.
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We rank them.
By what each is costing you now, against what it would take to fix.
A document you can act on, whoever you act with.
The workshop ends with a written recommendation. It’s yours to keep and yours to use — including with somebody else, if you’d rather.
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A ranked shortlist.
Every candidate within the agreed scope, ordered by what it costs your business today.
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What each would take.
Scope, and an indicative figure, so the shortlist is a decision rather than a wish list.
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A recommendation on what to build first.
With the reasoning, so you can disagree with it on the evidence.
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What we'd advise against.
Candidates that look attractive and aren't worth building, and why.
After the day · Example structure
Ranked shortlist
- Document handling Build first
- Quoting Then
- Client onboarding Then
- Reporting Later
- Client questions Advise against
If the answer is that nothing here is worth building yet, that’s what the document says.
From CAD $1,000, half of it credited if you build.
The fee follows the scope — how much of the operation we’re examining and how many workflows are involved. It’s agreed before the day is booked and doesn’t change afterwards. If you go ahead with an implementation, half the workshop fee comes off the build price.
A single area is one day. A business large enough to need several areas examined is a larger engagement, priced accordingly, and we’ll say so before you commit rather than after.
Implementation starts from CAD $4,000, depending on what the work involves — which is precisely what the workshop establishes.
Before you book
Why would I pay for this when the call is free?
They do different jobs. The call, and the discovery that follows it, examines one problem you've already identified. The workshop is for when nothing has been identified yet, or when there are several candidates and no way to rank them. If you can name your one problem, skip the workshop — we'll tell you so on the call.
Can't we work out our own priorities internally?
Some businesses can, and should. It takes someone with time to measure what each candidate costs, and current knowledge of what AI does well and where it still fails. Where that combination exists in-house, use it. Where it doesn't, the ranking stays a matter of opinion and the decision keeps getting deferred.
What if the workshop concludes we shouldn't build anything?
Then that's the recommendation, in writing, with the reasoning. Knowing that a job isn't worth automating is worth more than discovering it after paying for a build.
We're a larger business. Is one day enough?
Often not, and we'd rather say so before you book. One day covers one area properly. Covering several means either a longer engagement or picking the area most worth examining first — usually the second, because a ranked list of one area you can act on beats a survey of five you can't.
Who needs to be in the room?
The people who perform the work, and someone who can make a decision. A day spent only with management produces a description of the process rather than the process.
Do we have to implement with you?
No. The document is yours. The credit exists because we'd like to build it, not because you're committed to us.
How long before we get the recommendation?
Shortly after the day, while the detail is still current. We agree the date when the workshop is booked.
Decide it on evidence.
Twenty minutes, at no cost, to work out whether a workshop is your right first step. If you already know your one problem, we’ll say so and go straight to discovery instead.
Think AI, Think Ark.