AI Readiness Assessment: A 10-Point Checklist for Indian SMEs
Short answer: An AI readiness assessment checks five areas: how teams use AI today, which tools they pay for, whether data is organised enough to use, what skills people have, and what guardrails exist. Score each honestly, fix the weakest area first, and start with one process that pays back within a month.
Most owners I meet ask the same thing first: are we ready for AI? The honest answer is that almost every business is ready for some AI. The useful question is which part, and what has to be fixed before the rest can work.
This is the checklist I use in discovery sessions with SMEs and MSMEs. Score each point from 0 (not at all) to 2 (fully).
Teams
1. Do you know how each team uses AI today? Not the policy, the reality. In most companies each person has their own habits.
2. Is there one process for AI tasks? A shared way to set context, plan, review and store results. Without it, quality depends on who did the work.
Tools
3. Are you paying for tools nobody uses well? Many businesses already pay for ChatGPT and Claude and still have not found where they help. That was true at Dalmia Synthetics before we started.
4. Do your tools talk to each other? AI gets far more useful when it can read your sheets, CRM or stock data instead of copy-pasted snippets.
Data
5. Is the data for your key process in one place? Stock, orders, customers or tickets. If it lives in five places, automation starts with organising it.
6. Could you answer a basic question from your data in a minute? For example, which customers have not ordered in 90 days. If not, analytics is a strong first project.
Skills
7. Can your people write a good brief for AI? Context, goal, constraints and format. This is the single biggest skill gap I see.
8. Does leadership know what AI can and cannot do this quarter? Without that, budgets go to the wrong projects.
Guardrails
9. Is there a rule for client and personal data? What may go into which tool, and who checks.
10. Is there a review step before AI output reaches a customer? Every AI process needs one.
Reading your score
- 0 to 8: start with a leadership briefing and one small, visible win.
- 9 to 15: train the teams on a shared process and pick one process to automate.
- 16 to 20: you are ready for agents and deeper automation. Measure everything.
Whatever the score, fix the weakest area first. A great automation fails on messy data, and a great tool fails with untrained people.
Get a second opinion
Take the free 90-second AI readiness check for an instant score, or see how a full AI readiness assessment runs with each department. If you would rather talk it through, book a free consultation.
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