How to Run an AI Readiness Review in a Week
By Brainfy AI Team
A practical five-day plan to work out where AI and automation fit your business, which project to do first and what to check before you start.
How to Run an AI Readiness Review in a Week
You do not need a long consulting engagement to work out where AI fits your business. A focused week, spending an hour or two a day, gives you a short list of opportunities and a sensible first project.
Last reviewed: November 2026.
Day 1: List where time goes
Ask each person on the team to list the repetitive tasks they do each week and roughly how long they take. Include customer-facing work such as answering questions, replying to leads and booking, and back-office work such as data entry, documents, reports and approvals.
Day 2: Check your systems and data
For each task, note which systems are involved and whether they connect, for example through an API or a built-in integration. Note where data lives in spreadsheets, email or paper. Messy or disconnected data makes automation harder; see clean up your CRM before you automate it.
Day 3: Score the opportunities
Score each task on time saved, how rule-based it is, risk if a step goes wrong and how hard it is to connect. Quick wins are frequent, rule-based, low-risk tasks in systems that connect easily. Use the automation ROI calculator to put a value on the time.
Day 4: Review risks and limits
For the top candidates, decide where a person must stay in charge, what personal information is involved and which privacy rules may apply. See human-in-the-loop AI and Canadian privacy rules for AI tools.
Day 5: Pick one first project
Choose one project that is visible, low-risk and likely to save time within a month. Write a one-paragraph scope: trigger, steps, systems, review points and how you will measure it. For larger ideas, see how to scope an AI agent project.
Common first projects
If you want a head start
Our free AI readiness assessment gives an instant score, and our free AI audit is a conversation about your workflows that ends in a prioritized roadmap you keep, whether or not you work with us.
About the Author
Brainfy AI Team
Brainfy AI is a BC-based AI consulting and vertical-SaaS studio helping Canadian SMBs ship production AI with fixed-fee scoping and PIPEDA-aware delivery.
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