AI strategy consulting: where to apply AI, and in what order
Most AI consulting starts with the tools. The hard part is knowing which parts of the business are worth changing, and what to leave alone. We work that out from your own evidence and hand back a roadmap ranked by business value. For organisations that want someone to own it after that, we also act as your fractional AI CIO.
Illustrative. Your roadmap is built from your own evidence.
AIRE's AI consulting tells a leadership team where AI belongs and in what order: a 90-minute use case session, a readiness diagnostic, strategy and governance written against the Privacy Act 1988, the ACSC Essential Eight and your industry's own obligations, enterprise architecture and a full nine-step review. Every engagement ends in a roadmap ranked by business value, and a fractional AI CIO on retainer can own it.
What we advise on
From a 90-minute session to a fractional AI CIO
Most clients start with the use case session or the diagnostic and go further once they can see what is there. Each piece ends in recommendations ranked by business value.
Our AI consulting services answer one question for a leadership team: where AI will pay in this business, and in what order. The AI consultant you work with is a senior adviser who works from your own evidence, not a junior team working from a template.
There are four ways in. The smallest is the 90-minute AI use case session. The 90-minute AI use case session is $2,900 + GST. The readiness diagnostic shows where the organisation stands today. Strategy, governance and enterprise architecture work is scoped to the problem in front of you. The full nine-step review covers several teams and the whole application estate.
Every engagement ends the same way: a roadmap ranked by business value, written so that your own people, or any vendor you choose, can deliver it.
Four phases, nine steps, and AI does not appear until the seventh
Most AI advice starts by asking where AI could go. That is the wrong end. This starts with how the business makes money and where it is losing time, and only asks the AI question once the problem has been defined three different ways. What comes out is a roadmap of AI, technology and process changes ranked by the value each one returns. It works the same for a twenty-person practice and a listed operator; the evidence changes, the sequence does not.
Frame
What the business is actually for, before anyone proposes anything.
01
Business model canvas
How the organisation makes and keeps money, across all nine panels. Most leadership teams have never seen theirs written down in one place, and the disagreements that surface here are the useful part.
02
Strategic goals
Three to seven prioritised outcomes with key results attached. Everything downstream traces back to these, which is what stops the roadmap becoming a wish list.
Diagnose
Where it is losing time, trust and money. Evidence, not opinion.
03
Business capabilities
What the organisation is genuinely good at, rated one to five against how much each capability matters. The gap between importance and competence is where the work is.
04
Stakeholder journeys
The customer, the employee and the partner experience mapped end to end, which surfaces the pain that never reaches a ticket queue and therefore never reaches a strategy deck.
05
Application architecture
The technology estate as it actually is, with what each system costs and where it sits in its life. Usually the first time anyone has totalled it.
Solve
Design the fix. Then, and only then, ask whether AI belongs in it.
06
Solutions
Interventions designed against the goals and the pain, across people, process and technology. Plenty of them turn out to need no AI at all, and saying so is the point.
07
AI use cases
Now the AI question. Each candidate is classified as a quick win, a foundational enabler, a strategic pilot or a defer, and defer is a real answer. Candidates are drawn from your own evidence and every one is validated by a person before it survives.
Commit
An order of work, and a number the board can hold you to.
08
Roadmap
Sequenced quarter by quarter across parallel lanes, with the constraints stated rather than assumed away. This is the answer to “in what order”.
09
Business case
NPV and ROI, each line traceable back to a strategic goal from phase one. If a piece of work cannot be traced, it does not go in.
AI is not a strategy. It is one of the things you might use once you know what the strategy is, which is why it sits at step seven of nine rather than at the front.
The work
What each piece of advisory work delivers
Each card above opens here, with what the work is and what you get at the end of it. The people who do it will tell you what to leave alone as readily as what to start.
The AI use case ideation session
Ninety minutes with your leadership team, facilitated by us. It is use case discovery done properly: how the business makes money, where the time goes, and which of the ideas people already have would actually pay. Nobody is asked to arrive with a list of use cases, and nobody leaves with a vendor shortlist.
Forty-eight hours later you have a roadmap and a set of recommendations, ranked by the business value each one returns. Some will be AI. Some will be a process fix or a system you already own used properly. Each one says what it is worth and what it would take, so the leadership team can decide what to fund first.
It is one of the most requested pieces of advisory work we run, because it is the fastest way to get from a room full of opinions to an order of work.
A facilitated 90-minute session
A roadmap within 48 hours
Recommendations ranked by business value
AI and non-AI changes side by side
A roadmap in your inbox 48 hours after the session.
Illustrative.
AI strategy consulting and governance
An AI strategy earns the name when it says what to stop as clearly as what to start. Ours is built from the goals the business already holds, and names the few things worth backing this year, in order, and what can wait.
Without a written rule, the cautious teams ban the tools and the confident ones paste freely. Most organisations have no rule at all, or forty pages from a global framework that get pointed at rather than used. The tools stay banned until the policy is finished, and it never is.
The governance work gives your organisation one rule, written against the Privacy Act 1988, the ACSC Essential Eight and your industry's own obligations, that people can actually follow. Which plan to run on each tool, with SSO, admin controls and retention set so your security team will pass it. A one-page data-handling rule: what may go into a prompt, what may not, and what to do when it is unclear. And a position your board, your auditors and your CIO can all put their name to.
That data-handling rule is also the core of an AI policy. The policy adds what a person needs to act on it: which tools are approved and for what, who checks output before it reaches a customer or commits money, who owns AI risk, and who to ask when it is unclear. A draft lands within a week and is tested with the people who have to follow it until the cautious and the confident read it the same way.
ISO/IEC 42001, published in December 2023, is the international standard for an AI management system. It asks for an AI policy, named owners for AI risk, an assessment of each AI system's risks and impacts, and controls over the data those systems use. The governance work covers several of those: the data-handling rule is a data control, the policy is the AI policy the standard names, and the board's position is the leadership commitment it asks for. We do not certify, and we do not claim certification. That takes an accredited certification body.
Most roadmaps are drawn on top of an estate nobody has looked at in years. The capability map is out of date, the application list lives in three spreadsheets, and nobody has added up what the systems cost. So the recommendations assume things that are not true, and the first project finds out the hard way.
We map it as it is: the capabilities the business runs on, rated against how much each one matters, the applications behind them with what they cost and where they sit in their life, and where the data actually lives. That shows where a new tool would help, where an existing one is paid for and unused, and where the real fix is retiring something rather than adding to it.
It stands on its own, and it is also the Diagnose phase of the full review below.
A business capability map, scored
The application estate, with costs
Where to consolidate, retire or invest
A target state the roadmap can build to
A map of the estate as it is, not as the diagram says.
Agentic workflows, designed from the evidence
Once the review has found and analysed a process, we can design and build the agentic workflow that runs it. That order matters. A workflow built from a real process map, with the volumes, the exceptions and the people who handle them written down, does the job. One built from a demo does the demo.
Each workflow is narrow, observable and stoppable, with a person checking anything that commits money or reaches a customer. It is built on what you already run where that will do, and on the platform that suits the work where it will not. You own it when we leave.
A workflow design from the analysed process
Human checkpoints where they matter
The build, tested on your own cases
Handover to the team that will run it
A workflow built from your process, not a demo.
It ends in a decision, not a deck
Most AI advice fails in the same way: it produces a document. A roadmap nobody funds, a maturity score nobody acts on, a list of use cases with no order to them. The engagement ends and the organisation is exactly where it started, several months poorer.
Every engagement here ends in a roadmap of business value: what to do, in what order, and what each step is worth. It covers AI, other technology and plain process change, because the best fix is often not AI at all. Senior operators do the work, and the roadmap is yours to take to whoever you like.
Retainer
A fractional AI CIO, on a monthly retainer
Some organisations want the roadmap owned after it is written. The retainer puts a senior adviser in that seat for a fixed monthly fee. They keep the roadmap current, run the governance, deal with the vendors and report to the board.
They work alongside your CIO or CTO if you have one, and stand in for one on AI if you do not. Each tier is defined by what the adviser is responsible for, with the typical time it takes.
About 2 days a month
Adviser
For organisations with no CIO, or with an IT manager who runs operations, and for boards that want an independent view on AI.
A monthly steering meeting
A quarterly board paper
The roadmap kept current and reviewed each quarter
The AI policy, data-handling rule and AI use register kept up to date
Review of up to two vendor proposals a quarter
A reply to email within 2 business days
$6,500 a month + GST
Six-month minimum
The usual starting point
Fractional AI CIO
About 4 days a month
For organisations whose CIO or CTO has no time for AI, or that have no CIO, where the chief executive wants one accountable owner.
A fortnightly executive session, and the chair of the AI steering committee
Ownership of the roadmap and the business case for each item
The AI risk register, and approval of each new use of AI
Vendor evaluation and selection, and contract review for AI terms
Oversight of up to three initiatives
A monthly report, a quarterly board paper and one board meeting a quarter
$12,000 a month + GST
Six-month minimum
About 8 days a month
Interim AI Lead
For organisations in an active rollout, with several initiatives and vendor contracts in play, or a permanent head of AI to hire.
A weekly presence, on site or online, and a seat in the leadership meeting
A weekly status note, with monthly and quarterly reporting
Ownership of the roadmap and the delivery plan across teams
Leadership of the programme across all initiatives, with budget tracking
Management of the vendors, including our own build and training teams where they are engaged
A seat on the hiring panel for a permanent AI lead, and the plan to hand over to that person
$21,000 a month + GST
Six-month minimum
Each tier has a six-month minimum, then runs month to month on 30 days' notice. At any quarterly review you can move down a tier.
How it starts
The 90-minute AI use case session is the usual first step. If you sign a retainer within 60 days of it, the $2,900 + GST session fee comes off your first invoice.
The first three weeks are mobilisation: interviews with your leadership team, a review of your systems and any existing roadmap, and the AI use register. Within 15 business days you receive a written 90-day plan with dated milestones.
Mobilisation carries a set-up fee of $4,900 + GST on a six-month term. It is waived on a 12-month term.
The 90-day plan guarantee
Within 15 business days of the start, we give you a written 90-day plan with dated milestones. If the plan is late, or we miss a milestone we committed to in it, you may end the retainer at day 90 with no further fees, whatever the minimum term.
Build, training delivery and legal advice are not included. We quote each separately if you need it, and your adviser oversees that work.
What AI consulting costs
Starting costs nothing. The readiness assessment is free and takes three minutes. The 30-minute discovery call is free too.
The 90-minute AI use case session is $2,900 + GST. That is the small end: one leadership team, and a ranked list of where AI pays. Beyond it, the price follows the scope. Scope is mostly a count: how many use cases are on the table, and how many systems and teams the work has to cover. The full nine-step review, across several teams and the whole application estate, sits at the other end.
For continuing work, the fractional AI CIO retainer runs from $6,500 a month + GST, on a six-month minimum.
Either way, you see the scope and the price in writing, and agree to both, before any paid work starts.
AI consulting in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth
AIRE is based at Barangaroo in Sydney and takes AI consulting work in all four cities. We run the workshops and interviews in person where we can, and online when that suits you better.
Where the roadmap calls for training, each city has its own page with the local delivery details.
An AI consultant works out where AI will pay in your organisation, and in what order. We start from how the business makes money and where the time goes, and only then ask where AI fits. What you get is a roadmap ranked by business value, and some of it will not be AI at all: a process fix, or better use of a system you already own.
The readiness assessment and the discovery call are free. The 90-minute AI use case session is $2,900 + GST. Larger work is priced on scope: how many use cases, systems and teams it covers, up to the full nine-step review. For continuing work, the fractional AI CIO retainer runs from $6,500 a month + GST, on a six-month minimum. You see the scope and the price in writing, and agree both, before any paid work starts.
It is the useful part of it. We will help a leadership team decide what to do first, what to build and what to leave alone, and we will write the governance that lets them do it. What we will not do is spend six months producing a strategy document nobody ships.
We facilitate a working session with your leadership team on where the business makes money, where the time goes, and which ideas would actually pay. Forty-eight hours later you receive a roadmap and a set of recommendations ranked by business value, covering AI and non-AI changes alike. It is the fastest form of AI use case discovery we offer.
No. The recommendations are ranked by the value they return, and plenty of them turn out to be process changes or better use of systems you already pay for. Where a new tool is the right answer we will say which and why, and you can buy it from whoever you like.
A straight read on where your organisation is: which licences are paid for and unused, where the hours go, what the obstacles are, and what is worth doing first. It takes three minutes to fill in and a 30-minute call to go through.
Yes. The governance work is written against the obligations you already carry, which in Australia means the Privacy Act 1988, the ACSC Essential Eight and your industry's own obligations. It is a rule people can follow, not a policy binder.
Not unless a customer, a tender or a regulator asks for it. ISO/IEC 42001 is a voluntary standard for running an AI management system, and certification means an audit by an accredited certification body. What you do need is a rule people follow and someone who owns AI risk, which is where the standard starts too. Our governance work covers several of its requirements, so none of it is wasted if you certify later. We do not certify, and we do not claim certification.
It should say which tools people may use and for what, what may go into a prompt and what may not, who checks output before it reaches a customer or commits money, who owns AI risk, and who to ask when it is unclear. Ours is built on a one-page data-handling rule and kept short enough that people read it.
Usually the 90-minute use case session or the readiness diagnostic. The diagnostic takes three minutes and a 30-minute call and tells you where you are; the ideation session gets you a ranked roadmap within 48 hours. The full review is for when the decisions are big enough to need the whole evidence base behind them.
They take ownership of your AI agenda for a set part of each month. That covers the roadmap, the governance, the vendors and the reports to your board. They work alongside your CIO or CTO if you have one, and stand in for one on AI if you do not.
The retainer has three tiers: Adviser at $6,500 a month, Fractional AI CIO at $12,000 a month and Interim AI Lead at $21,000 a month, all + GST. Each has a six-month minimum and runs month to month after that. A set-up fee of $4,900 + GST covers mobilisation, and it is waived on a 12-month term.
Six months. After that, the retainer runs month to month on 30 days' notice, and at any quarterly review you can move down a tier. On a 12-month term, the set-up fee is waived.
Within 15 business days of the start, we give you a written 90-day plan with dated milestones. If the plan is late, or we miss a milestone we committed to in it, you may end the retainer at day 90 with no further fees, whatever the minimum term.
Yes. If you start a retainer within 60 days of the session, the $2,900 + GST session fee comes off your first invoice.
No. Most clients have a CIO or CTO who already carries a full load. We take the AI portfolio off their desk, report to whoever they report to, and hand over cleanly when a permanent hire arrives.
No obligation. We won't add you to a marketing list.
A straight read on where your organisation actually is
Book a free 30-minute call. You will get an honest view of what is worth doing first, what it would cost, and whether the use case session or the full review suits you. No deck, no pitch.
No obligation. No sales pitch. If we cannot see clear value for your team, we will tell you.
