A structured workshop to identify, score, and prioritize AI opportunities for your business
Before exploring where AI fits, define the landscape. What does your business actually do day-to-day? Which departments, teams, and workflows are in scope for this assessment?
Start broad. List the departments, teams, or business units that will be part of this AI assessment. Don't filter yet — include everything.
For each department, list the top 3-5 core processes. These are the workflows that, if improved, would meaningfully move the business forward.
Facilitator tip: Give each department 5 minutes to list their processes independently, then share out loud. This prevents groupthink and surfaces processes that leadership may not be aware of.
Take each core process from Part 1 and decompose it into individual tasks. AI doesn't replace entire processes — it improves specific, repetitive, data-heavy steps within them.
Pick your top 3 processes from Part 1. For each one, list every step involved — from trigger to completion. Be specific. "Handle customer inquiry" becomes: receive email → categorize issue → look up account → draft response → send response → log resolution.
For each step, ask three questions:
Key insight: The best AI opportunities are boring. They're the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that nobody wants to do but everybody depends on. If a step makes people say "I wish I didn't have to do this," it's probably a good candidate.
Not all pain is created equal. This section helps you quantify the actual cost of each bottleneck — in time, money, and strategic impact — so you can prioritize based on business value, not gut feeling.
For each AI-suitable step identified in Part 2, estimate the current cost. Be honest — rough numbers are better than no numbers.
| Task / Step | Hrs/Week | People Involved | Error Rate | Annual Cost Est. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
AI value isn't just about cutting costs. Consider:
This is the core of the AIScorecard. Score each opportunity across four dimensions to create a prioritized, defensible list. No more "let's try everything" — you'll know exactly where to invest first.
Rate each opportunity from 1 (Low) to 5 (High) on four dimensions:
How much will this move the business forward? Revenue, cost savings, customer satisfaction, competitive edge.
How technically achievable is this today? Consider available AI tools, integration complexity, and team capability.
Do you have the data needed? Is it clean, accessible, and sufficient? Or would you need months of data preparation?
Does this support your 12-month business priorities? Or is it interesting but off-roadmap?
| Opportunity | Impact | Feasibility | Data Ready | Alignment | Total | Priority |
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Scoring guide: Total 16-20 = High priority (start here). 11-15 = Medium (plan for Q2). 4-10 = Low (park it, revisit later). A score of 20 is the dream — high impact, technically feasible, data-ready, and strategically aligned. Don't expect more than 1-2 of those.
Based on the scoring grid above, write your top 3 AI opportunities in order of priority:
An AI project without governance is a liability. Before you start building, address the questions that will come up at the executive table — data privacy, risk tolerance, change management, and accountability.
What data will AI systems access? What are the privacy implications?
What happens when the AI is wrong? What's the acceptable error rate?
How will you bring affected teams along? Who champions this internally?
What's the investment needed? Who approves the budget? What's the timeline to ROI?
Use this to draft the one-page summary you'll present to leadership. Fill in each section:
Leave the workshop with a plan. Check off each item as you go:
Final thought: The companies that succeed with AI aren't the ones that adopt it fastest — they're the ones that adopt it most deliberately. You now have a scored, prioritized, governance-ready plan. That puts you ahead of 95% of organizations experimenting with AI. Go execute.
Optimaiz offers a half-day facilitated workshop where an experienced consultant guides your leadership team through the entire AIScorecard process — from scoping to a prioritized action plan.
Book a Workshop at optimaiz.ca →