AI audit: how do you know where AI is worth it in your company?

How do you tell where AI is worth it?

Take every task people call a pain and run it through five questions. A task that checks the first four and clears the fifth is a good candidate.

• Volume: how many times a week or a month does it come up? A once-a-year task won't pay back the setup.
• Repetition: does it follow roughly the same steps each time?
• Data: does the information it needs already exist in your files, email or tools?
• Time lost: how long do people spend searching, copying or rewording?
• Risk: what does a mistake cost, and does someone review the output before it reaches a client?

What does a good AI audit look like?

It involves the people who do the task as well as management, and works from real files: a recent quote, a client file, a team's inbox.

You write down how the task gets done today: who does it, how long it takes, which folders people dig through, how many rounds before the final version. That becomes your baseline.

An AI maturity questionnaire filled in during a meeting gives you a score but doesn't say which task to automate on Monday.

What should you walk away with?

A useful audit leaves you with enough to decide and enough to start:

• A short ranked list of tasks, with the reason behind each ranking.
• For the top one: the data to read, the tools to connect, and who reviews the output.
• The tasks that were ruled out, and why.
• A simple way to measure whether it works, agreed before you start.
• If possible, a first agent tested on your real cases, so you find out quickly whether you picked the right task.

When should the audit say no?

A good audit rules a task out when:

• It's rare. A few times a year, the gain won't cover the setup.
• It commits the company with no chance to review: a firm price, a legal opinion, a decision about a person.
• The data doesn't exist, or only on paper or in one person's head.
• A tool you already have does it well: your industry software, a rule in a spreadsheet.
• A general assistant is enough: writing an email, summarizing a memo, translating a text.

Why do audits that stop at the report so often disappoint?

Because between the list of use cases and a working tool sits all the actual work: choosing a vendor, connecting the data, testing, fixing. In a company with no AI team, the report tends to wait until someone has time for it.

Ask up front who will build it, and on what timeline. If the answer is "another vendor, later," plan for a second project.

How does Saména run this assessment?

You come with your processes, or just with what's wasting your time. Saména's engineers, trained at Télécom Paris and specialized in AI, look at how you work and tell you where an agent is worth it, and where it isn't.

They start from your real files, read in read-only mode from SharePoint, OneDrive or Dropbox, only in the folders you pick. Your email and business software can be connected too, as custom work. You grant access in two clicks, without sharing a password.

The assessment ends with an agent that runs: two weeks after the call, the first one is live, and it cites its sources. It lives in the Saména app, and also in Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot. After that, a dedicated point of contact keeps it evolving with you, on one monthly subscription for the whole company.

Frequently asked

How long does an AI audit take?

It depends on the provider and the scope. With Saména, it starts with a 30-minute call, and two weeks after that call a first agent is running on your documents.

Do we need to prepare our data first?

No. A good audit looks at your files as they are. That is exactly what shows which tasks already have the data they need.

Can an AI audit be funded?

In France, partly. For companies with 10 to 2,000 employees, the government covers part of the Diag Data IA, run by Bpifrance. The page "Diag Data IA: France's subsidized AI assessment for SMBs" has the details.

Is the call with Saména free?

Yes. The discovery call lasts 30 minutes, it's free and there's no commitment. You book it with Ange or Xisco.

What happens to our files during the audit?

They stay where they are. Saména reads them in read-only mode and keeps no copy. What it retains is encrypted with a key unique to your company, on servers in France. The page "Where does our data go with enterprise AI?" has the details.