Custom models & RAG
Your documents, your boundaries, your retrieval layer.
- Internal Q&A on HR, IT, and operations playbooks
- Classification and extraction on repeatable document types
Azure OpenAIOpenAI APIAWS BedrockVector search+1 more
AI Strategy
Climb the precipice. Prove ROI on the way up.
Scope, Foundation, Ascend, and Anchor: four stages from business alignment to governed deployment. Ready to automate a specific workflow? That lives on workflow automation.
The Precipice climb
Four stages. One path up.
Enterprise AI frameworks talk in pillars. We talk in stages: the climb from business alignment to governed production.
Decision guide
Start here, not with the keynote.
A quick guide to which stage fits where you are on the climb today.
Not sure where AI helps or if it is worth the cost?
Start at Scope. Align on ROI first.SOPs are stale or data lives in five places?
Foundation before any model work.Answers must come from your internal docs?
Ascend: custom RAG.Work spans CRM, email, spreadsheets, and tickets?
Ascend: agentic workflows.Staff live in Microsoft 365 all day?
Ascend: Copilot with governance.Sensitive data, audits, or board scrutiny in scope?
Anchor: human review and audit trails.Common paths
How most teams buy AI vs. how we run it.
Not a competitor checklist. These are the buying patterns we see from growing businesses before they call us.
| Criteria | Copilot rollout Vendor-led | AI agency Consultant or dev shop | DIY pilot Internal champion | Precipice Staged with your IT team |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ROI defined first | Often after licenses are sold | Sometimes, in the pitch deck | Rarely documented | Scope stage with success metrics in writing |
| Data and SOP readiness | Assumed ready | Scoped separately, extra cost | Usually skipped | Foundation before model work |
| Who owns after go-live | Microsoft plus your IT team | Agency retainer or handoff | Whoever has bandwidth | Same team that runs your stack |
| Governance and audit trail | Tenant defaults | Varies by firm | Ad hoc | Anchor: logging, review gates, owners |
| Tied to daily IT | Separate from helpdesk | Often a different vendor | Internal only | Helpdesk, security, cloud, and build together |
| When to stop | Recurring seat cost | Phase two proposal | Pilot becomes permanent | 60-day pilot with clear success metrics |
ROI defined first
- Copilot rollout
- Often after licenses are sold
- AI agency
- Sometimes, in the pitch deck
- DIY pilot
- Rarely documented
- Precipice
- Scope stage with success metrics in writing
Data and SOP readiness
- Copilot rollout
- Assumed ready
- AI agency
- Scoped separately, extra cost
- DIY pilot
- Usually skipped
- Precipice
- Foundation before model work
Who owns after go-live
- Copilot rollout
- Microsoft plus your IT team
- AI agency
- Agency retainer or handoff
- DIY pilot
- Whoever has bandwidth
- Precipice
- Same team that runs your stack
Governance and audit trail
- Copilot rollout
- Tenant defaults
- AI agency
- Varies by firm
- DIY pilot
- Ad hoc
- Precipice
- Anchor: logging, review gates, owners
Tied to daily IT
- Copilot rollout
- Separate from helpdesk
- AI agency
- Often a different vendor
- DIY pilot
- Internal only
- Precipice
- Helpdesk, security, cloud, and build together
When to stop
- Copilot rollout
- Recurring seat cost
- AI agency
- Phase two proposal
- DIY pilot
- Pilot becomes permanent
- Precipice
- 60-day pilot with clear success metrics
Want the longer version? Read Copilot vs. custom AI and AI governance for growing businesses.
Stage 01: Scope
Strategy & business alignment
Before anyone buys Copilot seats, we map revenue drivers and operational bottlenecks. The goal is high-impact workflows where AI moves a real number, not incremental busywork dressed up as innovation.
- •ROI scorecards tied to sales, finance, or ops workflows
- •Success metrics and stop rules before the pilot budget is spent
- •Stack audit: what you run today, not what a vendor wants to sell
Stage 01
Scope
Stage 02: Foundation
Data quality & technical readiness
AI amplifies whatever you feed it. Current SOPs, labeled documents, integrated pipelines, and private endpoints come first. Without that base, RAG hallucinates and agents fail quietly.
- •SOP and document inventory: what can touch a model, what cannot
- •Indexes, embeddings, and integrations owned like any other system
- •Vendor and access review before sensitive data touches a model
Stage 02
Foundation
Stage 03: Ascend
Deploy & model architecture
This is where the technical core lands: RAG on your docs, bounded agents, Copilot in M365, or dev AI for portals and glue code. One deployment lane per pilot, not four demos at once.
- •Pick RAG, agents, productivity AI, or build AI based on the workflow
- •Evaluation frameworks so you know when the model is good enough
- •Plain automation when rules beat models (see workflow automation)
Stage 03
Ascend
Agentic workflows
Systems that take action, not chatbots that guess.
- Intake triage, ticket routing, and status updates across apps
- Multi-step ops: read CRM, update a sheet, notify staff in Slack or Teams
n8nMakePower AutomateZapier+2 more
Microsoft Copilot
When M365 is already the center of gravity.
- Teams, Outlook, Word, and Excel power users
- Drafting, summarizing meetings, and searching M365 content
Microsoft 365Entra IDPurview DLPCopilot Studio
Claude, Cursor & dev AI
Ship internal tools and integrations faster.
- Prototyping portals, scripts, and integration glue
- Accelerating web and software work with Precipice
ClaudeCursorGitHub CopilotGitHub+1 more
Stage 04: Anchor
Governance & reliability
As AI takes on more responsibility, you need guardrails that hold up under scrutiny: access controls, human review, logging, and liability boundaries leadership can actually sign off on.
- •Human-in-the-loop gates on sensitive customer and financial data
- •Prompt, index, and agent tool permissions with audit trails
- •Monitoring, alerting, and an owner who tunes after go-live
Stage 04
Anchor
- Data inventory: what can touch a model, what cannot, and where copies land
- Vendor and access review before sensitive workloads go live
- Role-based access on indexes, prompts, and agent tool permissions
- Logging, alerting, and an owner who tunes prompts after go-live
- Training that matches how your team actually works
Already know the workflow?
Skip Scope. Automate the bottleneck.
Intake routing, weekly reports, invoice matching, CRM integrations: scoped, built, and monitored on workflow automation. Come back here when you need to pick an AI lane.
The 60-day climb
60-day pilot. Clear success metrics.
One timeline, four stages. This is the sequence we run on every engagement.
Talk through your pilot01
ScopeAlign on impact
Map revenue drivers and bottlenecks. Rank workflows by hours saved, risk, and complexity. Agree on success metrics and stop rules before tooling conversations start.
02
FoundationHarden the base
Inventory data, label SOPs, confirm integrations and vendor agreements. No model work until the inputs and infrastructure can support it.
03
AscendRun one lane
60-day pilot on a single deployment: RAG, agents, Copilot, or dev AI. Baseline metrics, one team, error monitoring, and runbooks.
04
AnchorExpand or stop
Review against agreed metrics. Expand when ROI and governance hold. Fix Scope or Foundation first when they do not.
AI strategy without the enterprise price tag.
Start at Scope. Climb with a guide.
We map which stage you are in, where plain automation is enough, and what your stack needs first. Ready to build? We scope it on workflow automation.