Five rungs, from "I think a couple of them use ChatGPT" to "it runs itself". Find your rung, then buy only what the next one needs. Clear services with nouns for names, honest prices behind a door, and sometimes the right answer is a spreadsheet.
Five minutes, no sign up · or read the ladder first
No jargon, no "digital transformation journey". Each rung is what a business actually looks like from the inside, in the owner's own words, and the one thing worth buying to reach the next rung. Most businesses I meet are on rung 0 or 1. That is not a criticism, it is a starting point.
Staff are using personal ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini accounts. There are no rules, no approved tools, and nobody knows what has already been pasted in. Cheapest problem on this page to fix, and the riskiest to ignore.
Written rules, approved tools, one named owner, staff trained on the red lines. Nothing automated yet. The temptation here is to buy software; the right move is to find out where the hours actually go first.
Two or three real jobs are measurably faster, and someone can name the hours saved. Each win is a fixed-shape build with a noun for a name: pick a job, rebuild it, hand it over working.
Systems talk to each other, the data is clean enough to trust, and the numbers arrive without anyone assembling them by hand. This rung is where the margin lives, and it is mostly plumbing, not magic.
There is a backlog, an owner, and a monthly rhythm. New ideas get shipped or killed on evidence. Nobody needs a consultant living here; they need one on call.
Nobody should buy a build from a stranger. Start small, and the same £450 travels with you: the check is fully credited against the audit, and £450 of the audit is credited against your first build. The ladder pays its own way up.
Eighteen questions, answered by you, about how the business runs today. A score out of 100, six areas rated, your rung on the ladder named.
Ninety minutes with me, walking your actual week. Then a four-page written brief, not a sales pitch.Ninety minutes with your registered manager, walking where the office hours actually go. Then a four-page written brief, not a sales pitch.
I go and find out. Interviews with the people doing the work, evidence instead of opinion, and nine deliverables, none of them a forty-page report.
Every service is a specific job, done, by a date. Tap a card for exactly what lands and how long it takes. Prices live behind the door, on purpose. Pick your world first:
Medication ordering between GP, pharmacy and agency. It is the biggest prize in the sector and it is an integration problem, not an AI one — anyone selling it as a quick win has never sat in a care office. Also absent: anything that makes a clinical judgement, decides a safeguarding outcome, or writes to a resident's record without a human pressing send.
Not hidden — one click away. The numbers are honest ranges: where a job lands in its range depends on how many systems are involved, whether they have a proper way in, and the state of your data. Every range holds; bundles are where the movement is.
How the ranges work. Bottom of a range: one site, systems with a proper way in, data in reasonable shape. Top of a range: more than two systems, no API on one of them, multiple sites, or data that needs a clean first. You get the number in writing before anything starts, and it does not move after that. Credits: one rule, one number — each step is credited into the next. The £450 check comes off the audit, and £450 of the audit comes off your first build, both within 60 days.
Everything above is a sample. The pack is the full set of all nine deliverables for Bramley & Finch Care, a fictional 42-staff provider, produced exactly the way yours would be. Real method, made-up company. If you like what their money bought, you will like yours more, because yours will have your own numbers in it.
Printable ground rules, a one page AI policy you can sign this week, the questions to put to your suppliers, a worked example of a finished audit, and a five minute readiness check that scores you out of 100. No forms, no email capture, no attribution needed. Put your own logo on any of them.
Same three fields either way. Pick what you want on the right: a 20-minute call, the £450 Health Check, or more detail first. I come back within one working day, and if the audit doesn't fit your service I'll say so rather than sell it.
Prefer email? kevin@ai-sustained.com