AI Operations Audit. 5 days. From £2,500.

The Big Four (Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, EY) typically run 8–16 week AI assessments at £80K–£250K, producing 80–120 page deliverables. Their assessments are genuinely excellent for FTSE 100 organisations with complex multi-jurisdictional operations. They're catastrophically over-engineered for UK SMEs. WayaNerd's Operations Sprint compresses the same five core stages (Discover → Diagnose → Score → Roadmap → Deliver) into 5 days at £2,500 by tightening the scope, productising the methodology, and skipping the deliverables an SME doesn't need (executive briefing decks, stakeholder workshops with 40+ people, three-year transformation roadmaps). We deliver the audit, not the consultancy theatre.

We tell you. Roughly 1 in 3 workflows we audit don't pass the AI-fit threshold — they're better solved with a process redesign, a different vendor, or a well-trained junior hire. Saying so is the whole point. An audit that universally recommends AI is a marketing exercise, not an audit. We've also had Sprints where the headline finding was 'your current AI vendor is fine; the problem is your data hygiene' — we wrote that up honestly and the client didn't engage us further. We're OK with that.

Yes — the default Sprint is fully remote. Day 1 + Day 5 are video workshops with your operations lead; days 2–4 are async desk research where you give us read-only access to whatever systems are relevant (CRM, helpdesk, financial software, time-tracking). We sign a UK GDPR-compliant Data Processing Agreement before any system access. For Bespoke Audits with multi-site operations, we'll quote on-site travel separately if it adds value — usually it doesn't.

Minimum: your CRM (read-only), your helpdesk / customer-support platform, your financial software (P&L access, not transaction-level), and whatever Slack/email channel your operations team uses. Useful but optional: time-tracking data, vendor invoice register, recent operational KPI reports. We don't need access to source code, secrets, or anything covered by your most sensitive IP — those workflows we map from documentation and interviews, not direct access.

For each workflow we estimate three numbers: (1) current annual cost (headcount × fully-loaded salary + tooling + opportunity cost on missed work); (2) realistic AI-augmented cost after deployment (assuming 40–70% workflow time recovery — we never claim 100%); (3) the delta as the annual saving range. We deliberately give ranges, not point estimates, because precision is fake confidence at this stage. Typical UK SME findings: £20K–£80K annual savings on the top 2 workflows, payback period 4–9 months, against a £2,500 Sprint cost. The exact number is your number — we don't borrow figures from other clients.

The Operations Audit is the entry-point methodology. It produces the diagnosis (which workflows, what AI shape, what ROI). The five service lines — AI customer support, training, automation, consulting, custom development — are the implementation options that flow out of the audit's findings. About 70% of audits lead to an AI customer support or automation engagement; 20% to training programmes; 10% to bespoke custom development. The audit doesn't pre-suppose which service you'll need.