AI Initiative Assessment
Before you fund the next AI idea, test the business case.
A short, fixed-scope gate that helps leadership decide which AI initiatives are worth a pilot — and what they must prove before scaling.
This is an independent decision gate before money moves.
Ideas are not the problem. Deciding is.
Most organizations already have more AI ideas than they can reasonably fund.
Chatbots. Document processing. Forecasting. Automation. Internal copilots. Customer-facing assistants.
The harder questions are:
- Is the idea feasible?
- Is the data usable?
- What infrastructure is missing?
- Who owns it after launch?
- What will it actually cost?
- What should the pilot prove?
- When should the team stop?
The gate forces those questions to be answered before significant investment begins.
Without a gate
- An idea gets funded because someone senior liked it.
- No baseline is captured.
- Infrastructure costs appear halfway through.
- Ownership is unclear after go-live.
- The year-end KPI says: ‘we did some AI.’
With a gate
- Every idea answers the same questions before funding.
- Baseline and success criteria are agreed up front.
- Infrastructure gaps and costs are visible early.
- An owner is named or the idea does not pass.
- Leadership can report which ideas were assessed, piloted, scaled, or stopped — and why.
Three checks. One decision.
Every idea finishes with a Go, Conditional, or No-Go recommendation — supported by evidence.
Intake
Problem, users, data, integration, risk, ownership, and operating responsibility.
A structured intake captures the business problem, current baseline, intended users, ownership, data needs, integration requirements, risk, and operational responsibility.
Some criteria are hard stops. Without an accountable operating owner, an agreed problem, or a usable baseline, an idea needs more work before funding can be justified.
Feasibility & infrastructure
Can the current systems, data, security, and people support the idea?
We identify infrastructure gaps, integration constraints, security considerations, operating dependencies, and the cost required to close readiness gaps.
We examine data access and quality, integration boundaries, sensitive-data handling, monitoring, and the people who will support the system. Readiness gaps become explicit dependencies with estimated effort and cost.
ROI & pilot criteria
What does the idea need to prove before it deserves scale?
We assess the baseline cost today, realistic benefit, implementation and recurring costs, expected payback, and the exact success criteria a pilot must meet before scaling.
The model accounts for review effort, adoption, and ongoing operation. Pilot criteria name the metric, baseline, scale threshold, and stop threshold so a promising demonstration is not mistaken for a proven business case.
Worked example: invoice extraction
Illustrative numbers only.
| Check | Finding | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Intake | Clear business problem and baseline, but no operating owner and no allocated budget. | Fail — hard stop |
| Infrastructure | APIs available, but sensitive vendor bank data cannot leave the environment, monitoring is missing, and additional infrastructure is required. | Upgrade needed |
| ROI | Claimed productivity improvement becomes much smaller after review effort, adoption, recurring cost, and realism adjustments. | Weak payback |
| Recommendation | Do not fund as scoped. Revisit only if ownership is assigned and infrastructure economics improve. | No-Go |
What you receive
- Ranked idea list
- Every initiative scored against the same criteria.
- Scorecard per idea
- Intake findings, feasibility, infrastructure gaps, and decision rationale.
- Infrastructure readiness
- Gaps, dependencies, and estimated effort/cost to close them.
- ROI calculator
- Editable model using the client's own assumptions and baseline.
- Pilot exit criteria
- Define the metric, baseline, scale threshold, and stop threshold before the pilot starts.
- Leadership one-pager
- Plain-language recommendation for leadership and KPI discussions.
Working method
Your team keeps the framework and can reuse it for future ideas. The goal is not dependency on Eshana.
How the engagement runs
Half-day workshop
Run the structured intake against your current idea list with the people who raised the initiatives.
Outcome: A same-day ranked view of the ideas worth deeper assessment.
Gate assessment · 2–3 weeks
Full feasibility, infrastructure readiness, ownership, risk, and ROI assessment for the top two or three initiatives.
Outcome: Go / Conditional / No-Go recommendation per idea with supporting evidence.
Pilot evaluation · optional
Define measurement criteria, capture the baseline, and independently verify whether the pilot met its agreed exit criteria.
What this is not
The purpose of the gate is independent decision support, not implementation sales.
- We do not build the AI solution as part of the gate.
- We do not pick a vendor for you.
- We do not write your entire AI strategy or policy.
- We do not promise ROI that has not been measured.
- We do not force a positive recommendation.
Why Eshana
Eshana brings nearly a decade of software quality experience across environments where unverified assumptions can be expensive.
The same discipline applies here:
- define the criterion
- capture the evidence
- rate the result
- make the decision
Independent by design
Eshana does not sell an AI platform or implementation product through this assessment, so there is no incentive to force a “yes.”
Small-team attention
Clients work directly with experienced practitioners, not through layers of account management.
Have an AI idea list already?
Send us the rough list. It does not need to be polished.
We'll come back with:
- a proposed workshop approach
- the three questions we would ask first
- what information would be useful before the session