AI strategy · Assessment and roadmap
AI strategy: decide where your business should start.
I help small and midsize companies turn AI ideas into priorities, requirements and a defined first pilot with clear evaluation criteria. We review processes, information and operating capacity to build a roadmap you can use to make decisions.
The business decision
Choose an opportunity before committing to an investment.
Your team may already use AI tools, several proposals may be competing for attention, or you may need to choose between buying a product and developing a solution. The assessment starts with tasks and their difficulties, alongside the people who understand the work.
I compare opportunities by frequency, current effort, information quality, the impact of an error and how readily someone can review the result. I also consider who can maintain the system after the pilot ends.
My background combines 30+ years in software engineering with the last four in AI consulting and development. Read more about Guillermo Ayala.
When this service can help
- There is interest in AI, but no clear priority task or owner.
- Several teams propose projects and you need common criteria to compare them.
- You want to assess an existing product against custom development.
- A prototype works in a demonstration and you need to understand what operation would require.
- You need a sequence of work with dependencies, decisions and measures of success.
The assessment may recommend preparing information, improving a process or using conventional automation before introducing AI.
Scope and deliverables
A roadmap with assumptions you can review.
We agree on the teams, processes and depth of analysis. The goal is to produce useful decisions and requirements for your business, supported by available evidence and an explicit account of what is missing.
Cost and benefit estimates are presented as scenarios. Your operating data and pilot results provide a basis for validating and adjusting them.
What the assessment can include
- An opportunity inventory with explicit prioritization criteria.
- A review of sources, systems, permissions and ownership.
- A comparison of options: an existing product, custom development or a process improvement.
- Cost scenarios covering integration, human review and operation.
- A phased roadmap with dependencies and decision points.
- A pilot definition covering the task, scope, examples, metrics and completion criteria.
- Practical recommendations for adoption, oversight and maintenance.
An illustrative decision
If a company is considering searching manuals, classifying requests and preparing reports, we assess what information exists and how each result could be checked. An appealing idea may first require source preparation or access to a system. Those conditions inform the priority.
How we work
From business needs to a concrete next step.
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1. Understand the work
Talk with owners and users. Review authorized examples, objectives and difficulties in the current process.
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2. Compare opportunities
Assess usefulness, feasibility and risk. Distinguish available evidence from assumptions that need testing.
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3. Define the first pilot
Specify a task, its current baseline and criteria for evaluating quality, total time and cost.
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4. Agree on the roadmap
Review priorities, dependencies and owners. Establish when to proceed, adjust or stop each stage.
The guide to choosing your first AI project helps prepare this conversation. If the opportunity depends on documents, also read how to prepare your company’s knowledge.
Frequently asked questions
What you need for the first decision.
Do I need a technical idea before contacting you?
No. A description of the task, who performs it and the difficulty you want to reduce is enough to begin. We can identify opportunities in everyday work and then consider which technical approach fits.
How do we judge whether a project is worthwhile?
We establish a baseline for the current process and consider frequency, time, corrections and the consequences of errors. Cost scenarios include development or licenses, usage, integration, maintenance and human review as appropriate to the scope. A pilot supplies evidence for the decision; an initial estimate does not guarantee a return.
Does the assessment include building the solution?
The strategy engagement delivers the agreed analysis and roadmap. Building a pilot or application is scoped separately, with its own deliverables, access conditions and acceptance criteria.
Can you help compare vendors and tools?
Yes, within an agreed scope. The comparison starts with your requirements: the task, data, integration, operation and cost. Each vendor’s conditions and interfaces need to be verified during the evaluation.
What information should I prepare?
A short list of recurring tasks, their owners, the systems involved and examples you are authorized to share. Confidential documents are unnecessary for the first inquiry. If you have several ideas, the guide to chatbots, RAG and agents helps organize the options.
Bring a need your team recognizes.
Define what deserves a test, what needs preparation and what evidence will support the next decision. The engagement can be structured in English or Spanish around your team’s needs.
If you have already chosen an opportunity, explore RAG knowledge assistants and AI agent workflows, or see all services.