Unlocking Business Potential with free AI Tech Audits Pt. 2

Intro

If you watched the previous video and/or read the article, you’ve already seen a preview of today’s topic.

We already covered:

• What are AI Tech Audits?
• Why are they free right now?
• A brief look at example results

Today, we’re going to answer how we came up with the final offering, and take a deeper look into the process.

TL;DR: The Process

The result for the AI Tech Audit process is this:

And if you prefer listening/watching to reading, check out the video:

8 Steps to success

1. We reach out and get referred to companies that might be interested in doing the audit
2. We do a 15-minute introductory call to gauge people's interest, compatibility with Niche Mates, and prepare for the coming interview + presentation, i.e. schedule calls, and all the admin hassle (still better than scheduling tools somehow)
3. Do the interview, understand their business process steps, what are the big pain points, why, what difference would it make to solve each pain.
4. The interview gets recorded, and the transcript is enriched afterward with our own notes.
5. Then we put everything together into a set of prompts to generate a rough outline of all the process steps we need to cover, edit, generate a flow chart (like the ones you see here), and edit again.
6. After getting all the facts straight, and having the business process mapped out on a manageable level, we stick our heads together to brainstorm solutions. We focus on immediate implementability, while also looking at the businesses long-term goals/strategy. We introduce solutions that will be easy to upgrade in the future AND that we can actually build ourselves or with help from our partner companies. This creates minimal technical debt, avoids getting locked in, and mean we can start executing on a vision right away.
   The result is the same top-down view of the business processes, plus our suggestions. Very easy to follow.
7. Finally, we present our recommendations to the client, including priorities on what to do next. During this presentation, we also go through an Eisenhower-type matrix, to rank our suggested solutions by importance. We usually get a pretty clear picture during the interview, but it happens that clients only start realizing how much a certain change would affect them, while going through the exercise. So, to avoid ending with priorities and next steps that are not priority #1, we confirm this live this the client. Sometimes this means that we have to switch to new priorities on the fly — but of course we prepare next steps for each solution we recommend, including how much time or money the client is predicted to save through the implementation.
8. Ideally, the client is very happy with the roadmap we built for them and wants to execute on the next steps immediately. Then we either start planning a project with them, or go into a deep dive session for a specific business unit or process — for more complex scenarios that could not be covered during the free 4–8h we pour in preemptively.

Step 9: Continued partnership

After doing the AI Tech Audit, doing into a deep dive, and delivering on the products/solutions we recommended our ultimate goal would be to establish a long-term partnership with the companies we work with.

As I stated in the first article of this series, we are not interested in quick cash flow boosts. We ultimately want to work with people that have similar mindsets to ours and are interested in playing the long-game.

Continues partnerships can come in different forms. Here’s a two:

1. repeat AI Tech Audits in regular intervals to keep your business processes in check & up-to-date (point in time)
2. embedding Niche Mates into your business as a long-term strategic & technology partner, to drive technological adoption and innovation (continuous)

Niche Mates is positioned as a HoldCo, which means our strategy is to acquire stakes in other businesses and hold on to them, effectively creating income streams from different sources. Over time, we will be able to craft a product portfolio of companies/products that complement each other and exist in symbiosis.

Proof for this is Swiftbrief.com which is a data-driven SEO platform we use in any venture to optimize content we produce around in (including this article).
Similar opportunities will arise, as we develop our business interests.

How did we get here?

We started with something way more complex and holistic, as you can see in the image below.

The initial idea was to get as much information from the client as possible with a 2h-ish interview. But as we discussed the actual implementation of these 6 larger topics into a general process, we quickly realized that it would likely take more than 2h, that clients would probably be reluctant to actually sit down for that amount of time during the first interview at least, and that in total this would take way too much time for a free offer anyway.
So, we decided to pivot from a maximizing to a satisficing strategy for this offer.

Instead of targeting everybody with an all-in-one business process audit, we niched down and focussed our messaging around technology and, of course, AI.

The large process map above is now the basis upon which we do the Deep Dive Tech Audits for larger clients or clients with more complex business workflows.

While we focus on technology solutions, it’s not the first thing we look for.
But more on this and our actual interview questions in the next article.

AI this, AI that — Are we riding the hype wave?

We are.

Is it just a facade?

Negative.

We actually implement AI when we say we are. Some businesses don’t have any upside from using generative AI, but there might be other machine learning-based solutions we can incorporate, or skip ML/AI solutions entirely when the client wouldn’t profit from it immediately. Lying about it would crush out reputation, like when Amazon pretended to have an advanced AI to support walk-out-checkout at their Go & Fresh stores in 2017, but instead it was 1000 ppl over in India hand labeling images. But I digress …

Some businesses don’t need all the latest bells and whistles.
Some businesses just need a task management tool and perhaps some automation between tools they are already using to streamline workflows.
In that case, we will recommend that.

Going from pen-and-paper or e-mail based work to using ClickUp, Notion, or Airtable, is already a big win for some companies and is likely to already introduce enough friction to start with.
Until the business gets used to the new way of doing things, and sees how much more they can fulfill with simply improved project management, there is little use to roll out the next big thing.
It takes time to adapt, and each business will get to that stage at their pace.
Once positive change occurs, people will be more willing to welcome more change.
We see these changes through with our clients, while keeping the eye on the ball and looking for ways to optimize further, in line with the grander strategy of the business.

Since AI stands for massive technological change right now, we incorporated it into the product name to address the audience we are interested in. People and companies who are ready to embrace change, and improve their current situation through technology. It’s a messaging anchor.

Recap

Today I showed you guys our simple-but-effective AI Tech Audit process.
As I said last time, it’s replicable by anyone with the skills to see their recommended solutions through.
We also covered how we niched down from a broader product to something more focused that can be accomplished in a days work.

Stay tuned for the next article, in which I am going to cover our interview process and questions.

Follow-up

Thank you so much for making it to the end 🙏
You’re awesome 😎

And because you are so awesome, and love to support creators, I know you gonna leave a like and follow for more ❤️🔔

If you’re interested in a free AI Tech Audit yourself, reach out to us on https://nichemat.es or LinkedIn