AI Readiness Audit

An AI readiness audit is a structured assessment of where AI can create measurable value in an organisation, where it is constrained by data, risk or regulation, and whether the workforce and culture are ready to adopt it. Tenhaw's version examines four domains rather than one: the external product a customer touches, the internal processes that run the business, operations, and the software development process itself. It runs 6–8 weeks at a fixed price of £30,000–£90,000 and produces a sequenced, costed plan rather than a maturity score.

Four domains, in this order. The external product your customers touch, and whether AI belongs in it or only behind it. The internal processes that run the business, traced end to end rather than taken from a process map. Operations, including the run cost of anything already live. And your own software development process, which is usually the domain with the shortest path from a decision to a measurable result, because it is the one place an organisation already instruments itself. Each is ranked against the others as well as within itself, because the first question a board asks is which one to fund.

Tenhaw prices the AI Readiness Audit between £30,000 and £90,000 as a fixed fee, scaled to organisation size and the number of business units in scope. Large consultancies typically price equivalent assessments between £150,000 and £500,000, our estimate rather than a published figure. The fixed price means the scope is agreed before the work starts and does not expand mid-engagement.

Start with the audit if the question is where to invest across the organisation and you need a board-ready case. Start with a proof of concept if you already know which workflow you want to attack and the question is whether it can actually be done. Some clients run the proof of concept first because a working thing persuades internal sceptics that a plan does not.

James Rooney leads every audit personally. Where specialist input is needed, it comes from an associate he has already delivered alongside, screened to BS7858 standard before any client access, and the people on your engagement are not substituted without your written agreement. Tenhaw does not sell work that someone else then delivers, and there is no pyramid of junior consultants.

A permanent Head of AI search runs six to nine months, and the specification usually gets written from market narrative. The audit takes six to eight weeks at £30,000 to £90,000 and gives whoever you hire a sequenced, costed plan to arrive into rather than a blank page. If you have already made the hire, the audit is the fastest way to give them a defensible first hundred days. It is not a substitute for the permanent role.

The number of business units in scope, whether prototyping is included, and how many sites or regions require on-the-ground time. A single business unit in one location with no prototyping sits at the bottom of the range; a group-level audit across four business units and three countries with live prototyping sits at the top. The figure is fixed in writing before the engagement starts.

It can tell you which of them are earning their keep. Weeks one and two inventory what is actually in use across the business, sanctioned or not, map each tool to the workflows it touches, and show where two or three of them cover the same job. That overlap, and what each costs to run, then sits in the sequenced plan alongside everything else, and consolidation decisions usually land on the do-not-do list. It is an assessment, not a procurement exercise: nothing on the ladder involves us selling you a licence.