How ready is your business, really?

Free · ninety seconds · no sign-up

Four yes or no questions about how your business runs today. At the end you get an honest read on where you stand, and the one thing to do next. No email box, and nothing leaves this page.

Question 1Does every part of your operation run on a system?
Nothing critical living only in a spreadsheet or one person's memory.

What counts as a yes
If the answer lives in one person's head or one person's spreadsheet, it is a not yet.

Yes Not yet
Question 2Do those systems share data with each other?
One customer record, one inventory number, one version of the month.

What counts as a yes
If two departments can quote different numbers for the same month, it is a not yet.

Yes Not yet
Question 3Does routine work happen without a person touching it?
Confirmations, scheduling, reordering, escalation, the weekly report that used to take a morning.

What counts as a yes
If someone re-types it, chases it or remembers to send it, it is a not yet.

Yes Not yet
Question 4Does anything in your stack make judgement calls?
Inside bounds you set, with someone accountable when it gets one wrong.

What counts as a yes
A rule you wrote is not a judgement call. A system choosing between options is.

Yes Not yet

Your position

Below 03 the returns shrink and the requirements get harder. Most companies should stop there, and I make less money saying so.

Answer the four questions. Your reading appears here, with what it costs you and the one next move.

Or read any of the five stages below.

Manual

What it costs you: You cannot answer a question about last month without asking a person. Your longest serving employee is a single point of failure.
Your next move: Nothing technical. Decide what you need to know, and agree who owns each record. Skip this and you pay for it at every stage after.

Digitised

What it costs you: Reconciliation quietly eats a full role, and two departments quote different figures in the same meeting.
Your next move: Pick the single source of truth for the customer, the booking, the invoice. A governance decision, not a purchase. No vendor can make it for you.

Connected

What it costs you: Very little. Most of the value of transformation has already arrived, which is the part nobody selling software will volunteer.
Your next move: Find the decisions that follow a fixed rule. If the rule will not fit in one sentence, it probably cannot be automated yet, and that is usually where projects come apart.

Automated

What it costs you: Low, once it runs. Your team spends its hours on exceptions and customers, which is what you hired them for.
Your next move: Probably nothing. Going further needs real data volume and real tolerance for a system being wrong. Most operations have neither, and there is no shame in that.

Intelligent

What it costs you: Real money and real attention. The only stage where being wrong costs more than the software does.
Your next move: Hold the line you are on. Most of the AI projects I have seen struggle were a jump to here from 01, usually after someone senior saw a demo.

Read the other four stages