STAGE 1 OF 5 · SCORE 0–20

Nascent Exploration

Your AI work is real but isolated. One pilot, one use case, one team — and no shared playbook for what comes next. Stage 1 isn't a problem; it's a starting line, and the organizations that advance fastest are the ones that diagnose it honestly.

STRATEGY
Ad-hoc, no shared AI vision

AI shows up in roadmaps as a line item, not a thesis. Decisions are reactive — driven by vendor demos and competitor announcements, not a defined point of view about how the business should work.

OPERATIONS
Manual workflows, no SLAs

The AI tool handles its piece, but the work around it — escalation, QA, knowledge updates, evaluation — is still done by hand. Nothing is service-leveled, and nothing is observed.

OUTCOMES
One use case in production

Real value, narrowly captured. Whatever wins exist are anecdotal and personality-dependent — they belong to a champion, not a system, and they don't compound across the org yet.

Ready to move past Stage 1?

Most Stage 1 organizations run 6–10 disconnected tools. Each generates valuable signals, but those signals stay trapped in separate systems. AI can identify patterns, but it cannot act on them when the underlying data, workflows, and decisions are fragmented. The first decision is about convergence: creating a single system where signals from across the business can be connected, understood, and turned into action.