A fixed-price, closed engagement. We walk the workflows, locate the drag, test where AI belongs, set the baseline, and produce a 30 / 60 / 100-day path. The Audit can end in five recommendations. Walking away is one of them.
Three signals point toward booking. If at least two apply, the Audit is probably the right first move. If none apply, the Audit is probably not the right call, and we will say so on the first thirty-minute call.
Founder, CEO, or COO running a workflow-heavy operation. The pattern shows up across construction and fit-out, real estate, logistics, and professional services. Wherever cash-critical workflows have outgrown the systems they were built on, the Audit applies.
Bid-to-award handoff. Client onboarding and first-invoice cycle. Pay-app or billing exceptions. AR aging or retainage release. Renewal motion. Days of cash on the line of credit. Whatever the cash-critical workflow is in your operation, it lives in someone's inbox.
You have looked at the next platform, the next AI tool, the next hire, and the next consulting deck. None of them survived contact with the workflow. You want a diagnosis before you commit another budget cycle to implementation.
The Audit produces five written artifacts and ends with a ninety-minute live read-out session. Not a forty-page deck. A roadmap workflow by workflow.
A documented map of the workflows that run your business. Where work waits. Where reasoning fails to transfer between roles. Where two versions of the same number coexist. Each friction point named, located, and quantified.
A list of the points where the workflow stalls, doubles back, or relies on one person's memory. Each item carries an estimated cost in days of cycle time, in cash trapped, or in error rate. The cost makes the decision about what to fix possible without Vaival in the room.
Where AI helps in the next 90 days. Where AI is not yet trustworthy in your operation. Which AI-assisted tasks need a named human owner, and which of your systems should never have a model deployed against them without contracted approval.
The evidence to observe before any progress is claimed. Cycle times, exception rates, hand-off reliability, and the cash-impact numbers anchoring the diagnosis. Without a baseline, every later result is opinion.
Three windows. Workflow by workflow. Priority order driven by cash impact, not theoretical impact. Each item: redesign sketch, proposed owner on your side, measurement plan, and the right next path (Sprint, Program, Pod, partner, or no-go).
Ninety minutes with you, your senior operators, and your controller. The Audit deliverable lands in a room where your team can push back, where the roadmap is sharpened on the spot, and where you decide what to do with it.
From kickoff Monday to read-out the following Friday week. No mystery, no scope drift, no surprise invoices.
Kickoff Monday with named owner on both sides. Interviews with the operators carrying the workflows. Document walk-through of source-of-truth systems. Initial reality map drafted by end of week.
Locate the root drag. Quantify against numbers your team already tracks. Test AI suitability per workflow. Write the 30 / 60 / 100-day path.
The deliverable lands in the room, not in your inbox. Your team can push back. The roadmap is sharpened live. You leave the session knowing what the next step is and whether Vaival is the right partner for it.
We do not push every Audit toward implementation. A clean diagnosis is worth more than billed hours we cannot defend. The Audit can end in any of these five paths.
One workflow, narrow scope, two to six weeks, clear owner. Best when the workflow is contained and the buyer is ready to move on a focused proof.
Two to four executive-sponsored outcome paths that need governance, dashboards, adoption cadence, and a sequenced improvement backlog to move together.
Governed recurring operation for selected workflows once the operating system is installed and the work needs steady accountability with named owners on both sides.
When the right next step is not our work, we name what is needed and point to a credible alternative. Honest referrals beat reluctant engagements.
If the outcome, evidence, sponsor, data readiness, risk posture, or ownership is not strong enough, the Audit recommends not proceeding. The buyer keeps the diagnosis.
Implementation is what follows when the diagnosis is clear and the buyer is ready. We measure the Audit by the quality of the decision it enables, not the revenue that comes after.
The Operating Leverage Audit is $5,000 to $15,000, fixed price, depending on scope, workflows in view, and number of interviews. Pricing is set in writing on day one and does not change inside the engagement.
Discovery interviews, workflow mapping, source-of-truth review, AI suitability testing, baseline construction. The five written artifacts and the ninety-minute live read-out, as named above.
Implementation. The Audit is diagnosis only. If the roadmap leads to a Sprint, Program, or Pod, those are scoped and priced separately after the Audit. You are not committed to any of them.
Fixed price means fixed price. No change orders during the engagement. If we find at kickoff that scope is materially different from what was agreed, we say so before contracting, not after.
If your operation is too small for the Audit to pay back, we say so on the first call. If your workflows are already clean, we say so in the read-out. The risk of finding nothing useful is ours, not yours.
Honesty about scope upfront protects the buyer. These are the moves the Audit refuses.
We do not sell software. We have no referral arrangements with software vendors. The Audit recommends governance, workflow redesign, and AI position. Tool selection is downstream of the workflow decision and lives with you and your team.
The Audit names workflows, handoffs, decisions, and incentives. If the friction is a role design, the Audit names the role design. If the friction is a specific person, the Audit notes the role and leaves the personnel decision with you.
We measure the Audit by whether the roadmap was acted on, not whether you hired Vaival for the next step. If the right next step is your team running the redesign internally, we say so in the read-out.
A forty-page deck of analysis is not a roadmap. The Audit produces five written artifacts and a live read-out, as named on this page. Implementation guidance is workflow-specific, not generic methodology.
If the fit is there, you get a one-page scoping summary inside forty-eight hours and the Audit runs the following Monday. If the fit is not there, we say so on the call.