Domain Audit

The Domain Audit examines one business domain of your company (an entire area of your business, such as purchasing or customer service), process by process, with the business rules that govern it, to tell you what can be handed over to AI and in what order.

It always includes three stages: the current state, with the inventory of your business rules; the costed prioritisation of the processes; a roadmap whose first stage to launch is priced. It is the first step of Business Agents, and can prepare a business domain of the Company Brain if you wish. It examines two processes to start with, and as many more as your business domain has, in two to four weeks, with the public funding application included when a scheme can fund the project; its price is set after the free Scoping Meeting.

Because Business Agents share an entire business domain and its rules: the Domain Audit puts those rules in writing before any agent applies them. Business Agents always start with the Domain Audit.

In practice, the audit:

• lists your rules, written or not, with their exceptions, their contradictions and who settles them: this is the knowledge base for your agents;
• measures the complexity of the business domain, the first driver of price: your Business Agents quote is costed on what it found;
• ranks the processes, so that you start with the right one.

It is never a prerequisite for Task Automation or the Process Agent, though.

The business rules inventory lists, one by one, the rules, written or not, that govern the processes examined in your business domain, so that an AI agent applies them instead of guessing them. Included in the Domain Audit, it states for each rule:

• its source: written, implicit or an exception;
• its contradictions, and who decides;
• whether an agent can apply it as it stands, or whether it must first be written down or settled.

Example: "long-standing customers are served first when stock runs short" is an implicit rule, still to be written down. This inventory becomes the knowledge base for your Business Agents, and for a business domain of your Company Brain if you wish.

The Domain Audit ranks the processes examined by value and feasibility, using your real figures, then recommends the one to start with, and why. The ranking takes into account:

• value: the volume handled multiplied by the gain expected each time;
• feasibility: the data available, how hard it is to connect your tools and to go live;
• the time to a first effect: a quick win, or a longer-term project;
• risk: how sensitive the data involved is, and the human approval required.

The processes selected are costed: gains, costs and return on investment. We recommend, you decide.

The Domain Audit roadmap is a dated plan for handing your business domain over to AI, stage by stage, with a decision point at each stage. It includes:

• a presentation for you and your partners;
• the quote for the first stage, and how to fund it: the public funding available and what remains for you to pay; the next stages are priced when they start;
• the tracking indicators, defined before any roll-out: what will be measured for each process selected, where it stands today and how to measure it;
• a single recommended next step: Business Agents and, if you wish, the Company Brain.

It also serves as a basis for decision with partners or a funder.

The current state, the first stage of the Domain Audit, shows how your business domain really works, before deciding what to hand over to AI. It gives you:

• a 10 to 15-page summary, written for decision-making;
• the map of your tools, and of what is still done by hand;
• the inventory of your data, including personal data;
• your constraints, in writing: what must not leave, who sees what, the obligations of your trade, such as professional secrecy or a main contractor’s requirements;
• the inventory of your business rules.

These constraints determine where your data will need to be processed later on: in Europe, in France or at your premises.

The Domain Audit takes place on the ground, over two to four weeks for two to five processes, on a scope agreed with you at the Scoping Meeting, which gives a precise price from the proposal. We meet:

• the business leader;
• the business domain lead;
• the people who do the work, who show us their tools and their rules, in real situations.

On site if you are in our region, the Annecy area, by video call otherwise. The number of people we meet follows from the processes selected, at no extra cost. On your side: their availability, and a decision-maker who can settle things at each decision point. A process that turns up along the way is flagged to you: you decide whether to add it.