Is your business ready for AI?

Here's your checklist. Most AI projects don't fail on the technology — they fail on data, process clarity, and adoption. Work through the ten points below; each one is a yes/no you should be able to answer honestly about your organization.

Your data

1. Your key data lives in one place — or could. Scattered spreadsheets and inboxes are the #1 blocker; AI is only as good as the data it can reach.
2. Your data is reasonably clean and consistent. Consistent names, formats, and IDs — messy inputs produce outputs no one trusts.
3. You can use the data legally and safely. You know what's sensitive (PII / PHI / payment data) and who's allowed to see it.

Your process

4. A repetitive, rules-based task eats real hours every week. High-volume, repeatable work is where AI pays back fastest.
5. The process can be described step by step. If you can't explain it, AI can't reliably automate it.
6. A wrong answer has a known cost and a safe fallback. Knowing the stakes tells you where a human must stay in the loop.

Your people

7. There's a clear owner who'll champion it internally. Tools without an owner quietly get abandoned.
8. The people doing the work are open to changing how they do it. Adoption — not the model — decides whether it delivers value.

Your goal

9. You can name the outcome and how you'd measure success. "Use AI" isn't a goal; "cut report time from two weeks to one day" is.
10. You have realistic time and budget for a first, focused use case. Starting narrow beats boiling the ocean — momentum compounds.

Your score

• 8–10 yes — You're ready. The hard part now is choosing the right first use case.
• 5–7 yes — Promising. A short discovery will surface the one or two gaps to close first.
• 0–4 yes — Start with foundations — data and process clarity — before AI.