How to run an AI audit on your own business (the framework we use)

An AI audit is not a technology exercise. It's an accounting exercise that happens to end in software. Here's the version you can run yourself.

Step 1: Follow five pieces of real work

Pick five recent, ordinary items — an order, an enquiry, an invoice, a new client, a complaint. For each, walk its actual path: who touched it, what they did, how long each step took, and how long it waited between steps. The waiting usually dwarfs the doing. Write it down exactly as it happened, not as the process document says it should.

Step 2: Find the repeated, rule-bearing work

Go through your trace and mark every step that is (a) done more than ten times a week, (b) governed by rules a competent new starter could learn in a day, and (c) currently done by a person. Copying data between systems, checking documents, drafting routine messages, compiling reports, chasing updates. This is your automation candidate list.

Step 3: Price each candidate

For each: hours per week × fully-loaded hourly cost × 52. Add the error cost where relevant — a mis-keyed invoice or a missed follow-up has a price too. Be conservative; the numbers are usually startling enough without optimism. A task taking two people three hours a week at £30 an hour is £9,360 a year, before errors.

Step 4: Score buildability

Rate each candidate 1–5 on: rule clarity (could you write the rules down?), data access (is the information in systems, or in heads?), and failure tolerance (what happens if it's wrong — is there a natural checkpoint for a human?). High rules, accessible data, safe failure = build. Anything needing judgement at every step stays human.

Step 5: Rank and be honest

Plot value against buildability. The top-right corner is your build list, in order. Then apply the hard test to each: if you can't name the number this automation exists to move, don't build it.

Where DIY stops

This framework finds the obvious candidates. What it can't easily do is spot cross-system opportunities (where the win spans three tools), price the build side accurately, or design the human-approval points. That's the gap a professional audit closes — but even if you never hire anyone, steps 1–5 will change how you see your own operation.

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