What we solve ·Where do I put the budget?
Vanguard · Guide
Which of all your AI ideas deserve budget?
I have fifteen ideas and budget for two.
Your candidates ranked by return and by what it costs to keep them running, with the evidence behind every estimate.
Prioritization sprintSend this page to whoever decides
This sounds like you if
- Every area brings you its own initiative and all of them look reasonable.
- There is approved budget and more initiatives than money to fund them.
- "Do something with AI" is already on the year's agenda and it still has to be turned into concrete initiatives.
Use this today, without hiring anyone
Four questions that drop half your list in an afternoon. Run them on every candidate before you ask anyone for a proposal.
- How much volume is there really? Count the times per month. A process that runs twenty times does not pay for an automation, however painful it is.
- Is the exception the rule? If every case is resolved differently, there is no process to automate: there is judgment, and judgment does not automate cheaply.
- Who keeps it running on day two hundred? Not who builds it. If you cannot write down a name, the candidate has already failed.
- Will this process still exist as it is in eighteen months? Automating something that is about to change is the most common way to spend a budget well on the wrong thing.
And the ordering that changes the result: rank by where the value chain loses money, not by which area is most enthusiastic or which candidate is technically easiest. Those two ways of ordering produce lists that look good and move nothing.
How we solve it
The method, not the promise.
- Your value chain is mapped down to the level where time, money or quality is lost. That level is deeper than what is usually documented.
- The candidates are inventoried, including the ones some areas are already running without permission.
- Impact is estimated with a range and a stated assumption, never with a single number, because a single number cannot be argued with.
- Difficulty of operation is assessed: who keeps it running on day two hundred.
- The ranking is delivered with written, reproducible criteria, so that you can re-prioritize on your own the following year.
What you receive
- The map of your value chain down to the point where the money is lost.
- The ranking with its written criteria, reusable without us.
- The top three candidates described at the level at which they can be contracted.
- The list of what to drop, with the reason for each.
The proof that applies here
- 250,000 incidents analyzed and 700 automated agents in production: that prioritization is exactly this work, done on an operation of our own.
- Six Sigma Black Belt.
- Running a 150 person operation across eleven teams, deciding every quarter where not to invest.
Before you hire
This product ranks and drops; it does not build, does not pilot and does not select a vendor.
Ordering a portfolio is a judgment call, and a judgment call is signed by whoever makes it. What is delivered here is reproducible, so you can run it again the following year without calling anyone. That is the proof that what you bought was judgment.
Of your fifteen candidates, how many have a name attached who will answer for them six months from now?
If the problem is a different one