Demos prove very little
Three prepared questions answered beautifully tell you nothing about the four-hundredth. You need to know what AI does on your data, with your staff, in your process.
Diagnose · AI Operations Audit
Find out where AI pays before you pay for it.
A two-week, fixed-price diagnostic of your business. We sit with your team, read your records and watch the real process, then tell you in writing where AI will save or earn you money, what it will cost to get there, and where it won't help at all.
Why it matters
Everyone is selling AI. Few are measuring it.
The real savings are unglamorous
They sit in retyping invoices, answering the same WhatsApp question forty times a day, and hunting for documents. Rarely in a chatbot on the homepage.
Wrong tool, wrong order
Buying software before you understand the problem locks you into a vendor and a monthly bill. Two weeks of diagnosis is cheaper than a year of the wrong subscription.
What you get
Concrete deliverables, agreed upfront.
Everything below is written into the engagement letter before work starts, so you know exactly what you are paying for.
- A 20–25 page AI Operations Report in PDF and Word, written for owners and directors, not engineers
- Your top five opportunities, ranked, each with a rough build cost, the expected impact in hours and rand, and a realistic timeline
- Quick wins you can switch on this month with tools you already pay for
- A risk register covering POPIA, vendor lock-in and change management
- A 90-day roadmap if you decide to go further, with us or with anyone else
- A one-hour leadership presentation, in person in Durban and KwaZulu-Natal, online elsewhere
Process
How the two weeks run
Days 1–2
Kick-off and access
We agree the scope, who we speak to, and which records we need. Confidentiality and, where personal information is involved, a POPIA operator agreement are signed before we see anything.
Days 3–6
Interviews, observation and data
Thirty to forty-five minutes with three to five people across different roles. We watch the real process where we can, because what happens and what the procedure says are rarely the same thing. We sample the records behind it.
Days 7–9
Quantify
Every opportunity is costed in hours and rand against your own numbers, not industry averages. Where an estimate is uncertain we round it down and say so.
Day 10
Report and presentation
You receive the written report and we walk your leadership through it, including the opportunities we recommend you do not pursue.
- Businesses with repetitive admin, document handling or customer messaging
- Owners who want an independent view before buying software
- Teams already using ChatGPT or Claude informally who want it done properly and safely
- Organisations preparing a budget or a board decision on AI
- You have already chosen a vendor and want a rubber stamp
- You want a chatbot because a competitor has one
- Very small teams, where a one-hour call may be all you need
Investment
R15,000fixed fee
Paid upfront. No hourly billing, no scope creep, no surprise invoice at the end.
- Duration
- Two weeks from kick-off
- Where
- On site in Durban and KwaZulu-Natal; remote across South Africa and abroad
- Afterwards
- You owe us nothing further. The report is yours, and it is written so any competent developer can quote from it.
- VAT
- Prices exclude VAT where applicable
Book the audit
Two weeks from yes.
Tell us a little about the business. We reply within one working day to arrange a 20-minute call, confirm the audit is the right fit, and agree a start date. If it isn't the right fit, we will tell you on that call.
- No obligation until you have seen the engagement letter
- Confidentiality agreed before we see any records
- Or email hello@agulhascode.co.za directly
Questions
Things people ask.
What if the audit finds nothing worth doing?
Then the report says so, with the reasons. That is a genuinely useful answer: it stops you spending money on the wrong thing, and it is a finding we are comfortable delivering.
Do we have to use you for the build?
No. The report is written so that any competent developer can quote from it. Many clients do ask us to build, but the audit is designed to stand on its own.
What do you need from us?
About two hours of the decision-maker's time across the fortnight, thirty to forty-five minutes each with three to five staff, and read access to (or exports of) the records involved.
Is our data safe?
We sign a confidentiality agreement before we start and, where personal information is involved, a POPIA operator agreement. Nothing of yours goes into any AI tool that trains on submitted data.
Can you do this outside KwaZulu-Natal?
Yes. Interviews and the presentation run online, and observation is replaced with screen-shared walk-throughs. The fee is the same.
Know before you build.
Two weeks, a fixed fee, and a written answer on where AI will and won't pay in your business.