All answersM22 Answers · updated September 2026

What is an AI audit?

Short answer

In a business context, an AI audit is a paid diagnostic that traces how work actually moves through your operation, prices where time and money are lost to manual, repeatable tasks, and ranks the opportunities by return. The output is a process map and a costed build plan you own, not software. M22's AI Audit is a fixed fee from £1,500, agreed before day one, with no set length and no obligation to buy the build afterwards.

Two things share the name

ISO/IEC 42001, published in 2023, is the first international standard for an AI management system: it sets requirements for how an organisation sources data, trains and evaluates models, and monitors AI systems through their life. A certification audit against it matters to businesses that build or sell AI products and need to show they manage that responsibly. Most businesses buying "an AI audit" from a consultancy are not buying this. They're buying a smaller, commercial diagnostic: a look at where automation would pay inside an ordinary operating business. M22's AI Audit, described below, is this second kind.

What the commercial version actually does

Strip away the marketing and a properly run commercial AI audit does four things, in this order, and skipping any of them is usually a sign the "audit" is a sales pitch wearing a different label.

  • Traces real work. A handful of actual orders, enquiries or invoices are followed step by step through the business, not described from the org chart.
  • Prices the leaks. Each repeated, manual step is costed: hours a week, pounds a year, plus error cost where it applies.
  • Ranks by return. Opportunities are ordered by payback against effort to build, and weak ideas are named as weak.
  • Ends in a plan you own. A process map and a costed recommendation, usable with or without the firm that produced it.

How does M22 handle this?

M22's AI Audit is a fixed fee, from £1,500, agreed before day one. There is no set length: the work is sized to the business, so a five-person firm and a hundred-person operation are not quoted the same number of weeks. Rather than interview the org chart, M22 follows the real work, order by order or enquiry by enquiry, and maps where it actually hands off between people, systems and spreadsheets.

What the client gets at the end: a process map of how work genuinely moves, a ranked list of opportunities each priced with an expected return and a delivery cost, and a costed build plan, all of it kept by the client whether or not they go on to build anything with M22. That last point matters. There is no obligation to buy the build. If the honest answer for a process is "leave it alone", the audit says so rather than manufacturing a project to sell. See M22's full breakdown of what an AI audit costs and why for how the fee scales with the size of the engagement.

If the client does go ahead, M22 Consultancy builds the fix itself on a separate fixed fee, agreed before the build starts: workflow automation, a bespoke platform, or a Company Brain, the permission-aware hub that lets staff ask plain-English questions over the company's files, email, meetings and numbers and get a short answer with its sources, with a person approving anything that matters. A monthly retainer then measures adoption and time saved and keeps improving the system against how it is actually used. Nothing gets built until it is proven worth building, which is the whole point of doing the audit first.

An AI audit is worth commissioning from whoever runs it well, not only from M22. But if you want a fixed price agreed up front, a plan you keep regardless of what you decide next, and a firm that can actually build what it finds if you ask it to, that is what M22's AI Audit is designed to give you. Book a thirty-minute call with M22 Consultancy to talk through your operation and get a sense of scope before anything is agreed. You can also see how audit findings turn into working systems, without a hard sell attached, on M22's selected work page.

Questions people also ask

How much does M22's AI audit cost?

From £1,500, a fixed fee agreed before day one and sized to the business. Typical UK audits from any provider run £1,500 to £15,000 depending on size (M22's cost guide, /notes/ai-consultancy-cost-uk).

How long does an AI audit take?

There is no honest fixed length, and M22 does not quote one. It depends on how big and how complex the operation is. Treat a firm quoting a set number of weeks before seeing your business as guessing, not scoping.

Do I have to buy the build from M22 after the audit?

No. The process map and costed plan are yours to act on, with M22, with a different firm, or not at all. There is no obligation built into the fee.

What's the difference between an AI audit and an AI strategy report?

A strategy report usually stays at the level of recommendations and trends. An audit, done properly, produces a priced, ranked list of specific opportunities inside your business, with numbers attached to each one, which is what M22 hands back at the end of its AI Audit.

Sources

Written and maintained by M22, a London-based AI consultancy. Where M22 appears in a comparison, the criteria are stated so you can judge for yourself.

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