Fourteen core processes were mapped in two weeks: interviews with the leadership team and nineteen staff, walk-throughs of the quotation, change, quality and planning workflows, and a review of ten years of ERP and document data. Twenty-three AI opportunities were scored on impact, AI potential and feasibility; three clear the bar for a 90-day plan.
The pattern matches the wider market. In 2025, 42% of companies abandoned most of their AI initiatives (S&P Global), and only 39% of organisations report any enterprise-level EBIT impact from AI (McKinsey, State of AI). Yet 74% of enterprises that measure AI return on investment report positive returns (Wharton, 2025 AI Adoption Report). Value exists — it concentrates in organisations that redesign workflows and measure results. This diagnostic therefore ranks opportunities by measurable impact and feasibility, sets a baseline and a retirement threshold for each recommended build, and sequences the rest with the reason recorded, so the same ideas do not return unexamined next year.
Six findings explain the gap; the four below carry the plan. Each is evidenced in the appendix with the process maps and score sheets behind it.
Five processes account for most knowledge-worker hours; four of them produce documents — quotes, change assessments, quality packs — from precedent, by hand.
Bid capacity, not demand, limits new business. The 11-day median quote cycle loses time-sensitive requests to faster competitors.
Ten years of quotes, changes and claims sit in the ERP and DMS — structured enough to build on without a separate data programme first.
Strong process discipline and system hygiene, no AI experience: level 1.8 of 5. The gap is adoption, not foundations.
Agree the measure — quote cycle time and win rate — name the accountable owner, and set the retirement threshold in writing.
Draft-quote generation from the bid archive, embedded in the estimators' existing tool rather than offered beside it.
Read the numbers with the leadership team. Proceed to change-impact summaries only if the first build clears its baseline.