Breakwater Operations
The AI Operations Audit
Four weeks. We find where your operation loses hours and money, put real numbers on it, and hand you a 90 day roadmap. Every opportunity pinned to a specific operational or financial figure.
Why the diagnosis comes first
Most AI spending goes to a tool somebody liked the look of. The tool works fine. It just doesn't touch the place the business is actually losing money, because nobody looked before buying.
Consultancies deliver a strategy and leave. Vendors deliver a build nobody asked for. The step both of them skip is the one that decides whether any of it pays off.
It's also why the audit is paid. A free assessment has one possible conclusion. A paid one can tell you to wait, and that answer is worth something.
How it runs
Ground truth
Leadership interviews and workflow observation. Time with the people doing the work, not just the people who bought the engagement. We look at the systems in use and the systems people work around, because the second list is usually where the hours are.
Quantify
Hours and dollars on every leak. This is what separates an audit from an opinion. Each finding carries an estimated annual cost, a confidence level, and the assumptions behind it, so your CFO can check our work.
Rank and specify
Score by value, effort, and risk, then specify what the top items would take to build: time, cost, dependencies, and who has to change what. Delivered as a written report and a live session with your decision-makers.
What you get
- A summary. What we found, what it's costing, what we'd do first. One page.
- Where the time goes, mapped by function, with hours attached.
- Findings. Each with what happens now, annual cost, what it could look like, confidence level, and effort to fix.
- A 90 day roadmap, ranked by value against effort.
- What we'd build first, specified in enough detail for anyone to price it. Us, your own team, or another firm.
- What isn't worth building, and why. Usually the most useful section in the document.
- Assumptions and limits. What we couldn't see and what we'd need to confirm.
Scoped three ways
Fixed scope and fixed price. Which one fits depends on how much of the operation we're looking at, and we'll tell you on the first call.
Compact
One function or department. Good when you already know roughly where it hurts and want it quantified before you spend anything on fixing it.
Most companies start here
Standard
Core operations across functions. The full picture of where a 30 to 400 person business is losing time, and what the top three fixes are worth.
Comprehensive
Whole operation, multiple sites or entities. For organizations with real complexity across locations or subsidiaries.
Our guarantee
If the audit doesn't identify opportunities worth at least three times the fee in annual savings, we refund it.
We can offer that because in an operation this size, a real diagnosis clears the bar comfortably. If it ever stops clearing, that's something we need to know about how we're working.
Find out what it's actually worth.
Thirty minutes on a call tells us whether the audit is the right next step for you. If it isn't, we'll point you at the one that is.
Book a fit call