Skip to main content
Orange Jelly

assessment

would AI actually help your business?

Not a technical assessment. This asks whether the business is in a state where AI would actually help, which is the more useful question and the one most tools skip.

Twelve statements, about two minutes. Answer how often each one is true of your business; "always" is the good answer every time. Nothing is stored unless you decide to get in touch, and the result says where AI would not help as well as where it would.

Twelve statements. No score at the end.

Answer how often each one is true. There is no right answer and nothing is stored unless you decide to get in touch.

0 of 12 answered

  1. We can explain exactly where our best new customers come from.
  2. When we need more enquiries, we know which lever to pull.
  3. We know how many enquiries turn into paying work, and why the rest don't.
  4. Someone follows up every enquiry within a day, without being chased.
  5. We know which products, services or customers actually make us money.
  6. We review pricing on a schedule rather than when something goes wrong.
  7. Information gets typed in once. Nobody re-keys it into a second system.
  8. Work keeps moving when one particular person is busy or away.
  9. We hear from customers about problems before they leave, not after.
  10. A new team member could deliver our service to the same standard as our best person.
  11. We could take on 50% more work without something breaking.
  12. Our numbers are current enough to act on this week.

what this will not tell you.

Three things, said here rather than discovered afterwards.

  • A score.

    There is no number and no mark out of anything. A score invites a league table and false precision, and neither would tell you what to do on Monday.

  • A full answer.

    Twelve statements cannot tell you what is wrong with a business. What they give you is a pointer to where to look, which is a genuinely different thing and worth having.

  • That you need AI.

    The result names where AI would not help as well as where it would. On several of these areas the honest answer is that the problem is not a technology problem.

the six areas it looks at.

Demand
You cannot say where your best customers actually come from, and when you need more enquiries there is no obvious lever. That is a measurement problem before it is a marketing problem, and spending more on the second one rarely fixes the first.
Conversion
Enquiries arrive and nobody can say how many turn into work, or why the rest did not. Follow-up depends on somebody remembering, which means it depends on how busy that somebody was.
Margin
You cannot say which products, services or customers actually make money, and pricing gets looked at when something goes wrong rather than on a schedule. Growth on those terms makes the problem bigger, not smaller.
Operations
The same information gets typed into more than one place, and work stalls waiting on one particular person. Nobody has time to fix the thing that would give them time, which is how it stays.
Experience
You hear about problems after people have gone rather than before, and the standard depends on who happens to be working. Both are invisible until you look for them, which is why they persist.
Scale
Half as much work again would break something, and the numbers are not current enough to decide on this week. What got the business here is now the thing holding it.

a pointer, not an answer.

Whatever it says, the useful next step is the same: an hour on the phone, free, where somebody asks the follow-up questions twelve statements cannot.

Let's talk