ETHORITY®
ETHORITY · ADVISORY SERVICE · €3,500 NET · ONE WORKSHOP DAY
Where you stand with AI: one workshop day, then a written assessment.
If your teams already use AI in several places, someone needs to own the overall picture. In one workshop day, your leadership team assesses seven areas, from strategy to operations, works out your five most valuable AI uses, ranked by value, feasibility and risk and each with an owner, and drafts a 90-day plan for leadership review. The written assessment follows. ETHORITY calls this the AI Readiness & Maturity Check.
- €3,500
- fixed price, net, credited against a follow-on project within 60 daysETHORITY price list, 16 Oct 2026
- 1 workshop day
- up to 8 leaders, then the written assessmentETHORITY price list, 16 Oct 2026
- 2 Feb 2025
- AI literacy duty (Article 4) in forceReg. (EU) 2024/1689, Art. 113 · EUR-Lex · eur-lex.europa.eu ↗
- 961
- AI offerings in the October 2026 study · 485 profiles in the online catalogueGood AI Prism, Oct 2026
Seven areas, each scored 1 to 5, with the reasoning written down.
Strategy, use cases, data, people, governance (rules and responsibilities), trust and operations each get a score your team can question.
ETHORITY product sheet, 16 Oct 2026
Five AI uses ranked by value, feasibility and risk.
Each of the five gets an owner before the day ends, so the plan has names, not departments.
ETHORITY product sheet, 16 Oct 2026
The EU AI literacy duty has applied since February 2025.
A short check on the day shows whether your AI literacy measures and tools already meet Article 4 of the EU AI Act, and which other duties likely apply.
Reg. (EU) 2024/1689, Art. 113
Who it is for
Managing directors and leadership teams of companies with 50 to 2,000 employees, where AI is used in pockets but nobody owns the overall picture. It also suits leadership teams who disagree about how fast to move, and companies that want a subsidised first step before a larger project.
Typical situations: a works council asks which AI tools are approved; a bank or auditor asks for an AI position; three pilots compete for one budget.
The question it answers
Where do we really stand with AI, what is worth doing first, and who owns it?
What you receive
Select a result to see it in a scenario.
Scenario: a manufacturer with 600 employees; three pilots compete for one budget.
- 1
Maturity profile on seven pillars, based on the ETHORITY Ethical AI Trust Framework, each scored 1–5 with written reasoning.
Maturity profile
Read as text
AI Readiness & Maturity Check · Maturity profile · Scenario
Scenario: a manufacturer with 600 employees; three pilots compete for one budget.
Leadership team · 8 participants:
- Strategy: 2.5 (2–4)
- Use cases: 3 (2–4)
- Data: 2 (1–3)
- People: 2.5 (2–3)
- Governance: 1.5 (1–2)
- Trust: 2 (1–3)
- Operations: 3 (2–4)
1 = not started · 5 = leading
Biggest gap: governance. Nobody owns the overall picture yet.
- 22
Benchmark position against the anonymised ETHORITY readiness benchmark where enough comparable data exists; otherwise a clearly marked qualitative assessment.
- 3
Top five AI use cases, prioritised by value, feasibility and risk, checked against real offerings in the Good AI Prism registry.
Your five AI uses
Read as text
AI Readiness & Maturity Check · Top five AI uses · Scenario
Scenario: a manufacturer with 600 employees; three pilots compete for one budget.
- Draft spare-parts quotes · Value: High; Feasibility: High; Risk: Low; Owner: Head of Sales
- Match supplier invoices · Value: High; Feasibility: High; Risk: Low; Owner: CFO
- Sort service tickets · Value: Medium; Feasibility: High; Risk: Low; Owner: Head of Service
- Predict machine faults · Value: High; Feasibility: Medium; Risk: Medium; Owner: Head of Production
- Review supplier contracts · Value: Medium; Feasibility: Medium; Risk: Medium; Owner: Head of Procurement
Chosen from 21 candidates found along the value chain on the workshop day.
- 4
AI Act quick scan: which duties likely apply and whether an AI Act Readiness Sprint is advisable.
AI Act quick scan
Read as text
AI Readiness & Maturity Check · AI Act quick scan · Scenario
Scenario: a manufacturer with 600 employees; three pilots compete for one budget.
- Writing assistant for all staff: Article 4 · AI literacy
- Chatbot on the customer portal: Article 50 · tell users they talk to AI
- CV screening in recruiting: Annex III · high-risk, from 2 Dec 2027
- Quote drafting (planned): Article 4 · AI literacy
- Shadow AI: 6 tools without approval: Register and approve first
Readiness Sprint advisable: One likely high-risk system and six tools without approval.
Indicative, not a legal opinion
- 5
90-day plan with ten to fifteen concrete actions and owners.
90-day plan
Read as text
AI Readiness & Maturity Check · 90-day plan · Scenario
Scenario: a manufacturer with 600 employees; three pilots compete for one budget.
Days 1–30:
- Name an AI owner for the company
- Register all AI tools, including the six without approval
- Approve or retire each unapproved tool
- Start invoice matching in one plant
Days 31–60:
- Run a literacy day for 20 key users
- Write the usage policy with the works council
- Pilot quote drafting with two sales reps
- Decide on the AI Act Readiness Sprint
Days 61–90:
- Measure invoice matching against today
- Roll out quote drafting to all reps
- Prepare the predictive-maintenance data
- Report to the board
12 actions · 7 owners
- 66
Report of 12–18 pages plus a two-page leadership summary, signed by Sten Franke.
1 / 4 · Maturity profile
Seven areas, each scored 1 to 5, with the reasoning written down.
Scenario: a manufacturer with 600 employees; three pilots compete for one budget.
Read as text
AI Readiness & Maturity Check · Maturity profile · Scenario
Scenario: a manufacturer with 600 employees; three pilots compete for one budget.
Leadership team · 8 participants:
- Strategy: 2.5 (2–4)
- Use cases: 3 (2–4)
- Data: 2 (1–3)
- People: 2.5 (2–3)
- Governance: 1.5 (1–2)
- Trust: 2 (1–3)
- Operations: 3 (2–4)
1 = not started · 5 = leading
Biggest gap: governance. Nobody owns the overall picture yet.
How it works
- Week before
30-minute kick-off; each participant answers 35 questions across the seven pillars (about 20 minutes); you send strategy papers, an IT overview and your list of known AI tools.
- Day 1 · morning
First, how AI is changing your market and how each participant scored the seven areas, side by side. Then a search for value along your value chain that produces 15–25 candidate AI uses.
- Day 1 · afternoon
The top five are worked out in detail. Then a check of your duties: EU AI Act quick scan, staff training status, and tools in use with and without approval (shadow AI). The first version of the 90-day plan follows.
- Within 7 working days
Report, written and quality-checked by Sten Franke, and a 45-minute results call. One 20-minute presentation to the supervisory board or works council is included.
Packages and price
AI Readiness & Maturity Check
€3,500 one-time · net
Preparation, one on-site or remote workshop day (up to 8 participants), report and 45-minute results call. Travel within Germany included.
Date and place by agreement
See what this package includes →Terms
Fixed price, net. Credited in full against a follow-on project started within 60 days. Work starts after confirmed payment and complete agreed inputs. Additional participants or a second site are quoted separately. Your time: about two hours of preparation and one workshop day.
What the check covers
A leadership assessment with a 90-day plan. Legal assessment, system audits and vendor selection follow as named next steps in that plan.
Who is accountable for the result
Sten Franke
Founder & CEO
Sten Franke designs and builds AI systems, from model testing and cloud setup to the interfaces people use. He connects business decisions, software architecture and practical implementation.
AI architecture · Model testing · Cloud engineering · UX
His work spans programming, LLM evaluation, Google Cloud and AWS environments, and web applications built with Next.js and React. He connects business requirements, software architecture and practical implementation. Creator of the Good AI Prism, he brings market intelligence into AI decisions. Earlier, he created the Social Media Prisma, led a BVDW Social Media working group and contributed to its Social Media Kompass. His entrepreneurial work includes ethority, Gridpatrol and mediatime, following a practical foundation in electronics and industrial robotics.
sten@ethority.aiReal offerings we compare against
Use cases from the day are checked against real, dated offerings. Three profiles show the kind of facts we bring into the room: Zendesk AI in customer service, nele.ai for knowledge search and Circula for finance teams. The online catalogue has 485 profiles. The market study covers 961 offerings in its separate research population.
Zendesk AI
Zendesk · Product
AI agents inside Zendesk that answer customer requests; Zendesk bills them per “automated resolution”.
- Published price
- How it is billed
- Where data is stored
- Certificates and audit reports
nele.ai
nele.ai · Platform
nele.ai is a browser and desktop AI workspace for German SMEs billed through a company-wide monthly credit pool instead of per-user licences, with uploaded knowledge bases and optional pseudonymisation.
- Published price
- How it is billed
- Where data is stored
- Does it train AI on your data?
Circula
Circula · Product
Expense workflow tool built for German legislation, whose AI enforces tax and policy rules in real time from receipt capture to approvals.
- Published price
- How it is billed
- Where data is stored
- Certificates and audit reports
Read before you decide
Three pieces leaders read before the day, starting with why saved hours are not value.
AI spending is forecast to rise by half. 37% of surveyed organisations see an effect on profit.
Sourced figures for 2025–26 on AI spending, adoption, models, energy and value, for your 2027 planning.
See the map on one page →
Saved hours are not AI value.
Separate a better task, freed-up time and a business result, so you can show the value AI really delivers.
See the map on one page →
AI-first means changing how you work, not counting tools.
What has to change across the organisation: strategy, work, decision rights, knowledge, evidence and leadership.
See the map on one page →Test your numbers first
The matching calculator is the AI Opportunity Map: rank your candidate uses before the workshop. All tools sit in the ETHORITY AI calculator suite.
AI Opportunity Map calculator
Ranks up to six candidate AI uses across the 24 topic areas of the Good AI Prism by the hours at stake, how ready you are and who is affected.
Pilot version · Scenario calculator
Open the calculator →AI Journey Planner
A plan from the first idea to scaling up, with milestones, owners, checkpoints and the EU AI Act dates in that period.
Pilot version · Scenario calculator
Open the calculator →Good AI Prism map
The market study examines 961 AI offerings. The separate online catalogue contains 485 profiles; the counts describe different populations.
Questions buyers ask
Do we need technical people in the room?
One person who knows your IT landscape helps, but is not required.
Can it be remote?
Yes, as two half-day sessions at the same price.
Who sees our data?
Before any data is shared, ETHORITY agrees with you who may access and process it for the assignment, which service providers are involved and where it may go. Data is used only within that agreed arrangement. Your answers enter the anonymised benchmark dataset only with your separate explicit consent; your report does not depend on that consent.
What happens to the €3,500 if we continue?
If a follow-on project starts within 60 days, the full amount is credited against it.
Is the score comparable with other companies?
Where enough comparable data exists, yes. Where it does not, the report says so and the score stands as a qualitative assessment.
Next step
Request a 30-minute call to fix the date and participants. Teams that already know their top AI use can go straight to the AI Opportunity Case; teams that need rules first start with AI Literacy & Adoption.
ETHORITY · LONG READ
Why a maturity score is worth one day of leadership time
Most companies already pay for AI in several places. Few can say what it is worth, who owns it or what the law now asks. One structured day changes that.
AI rarely arrives as one decision. It arrives as a writing assistant in marketing, a feature inside the CRM, a pilot in customer service and a tool somebody's team bought on a credit card. Each choice made sense on its own. Together they leave a leadership team without a shared view of goals, risks, skills and data.
The Readiness & Maturity Check is built for that moment. It puts the leadership team in one room for one day and replaces opinions with a scored profile. Before the day, every participant rates the same 35 questions. On the day, the individual scores sit side by side. The largest differences are usually the most useful part: when the managing director rates governance at four and the head of IT rates it at two, the plan has found its first topic.
The second half of the day turns to value. The group collects 15 to 25 candidate uses along its own value chain and scores them for value, feasibility and risk. The top five are checked against real offerings, using the dated facts in the Good AI Prism market study, so the options on the wall exist and can be bought today.
The third element is duty. The AI literacy duty has applied since 2 February 2025 under Article 4 of the AI Act, and many companies cannot yet show what they have done. The quick scan names the duties that likely apply and says plainly whether a deeper sprint is needed.
What leaves the room is a plan with dates and names. The acceptance test is simple: the leadership team agrees the score, each of the five use cases has an owner, and the 90-day plan has dates. If any of those is missing, the day is not finished.
For a mid-sized company the price is designed to be approved without a tender, and it is credited in full if a follow-on project starts within 60 days. Many teams continue with a sprint or a literacy programme. Some decide to stop a pilot. Both are good outcomes, because both are decisions.
Sources and further reading
YOUR NEXT STEP
Discuss your question with Sten Franke.
Bring your business question or the figures you already know. ETHORITY investigates within the agreed scope; together with Sten Franke you agree the next piece of work.