Paid engagement · 6 weeks

Before you deploy AI workers, understand your firm.

A 6-week paid engagement that maps your firm’s data, processes, and economic surface to deployable AI worker opportunities, with an investable case for each. We do this before we build, not after.

6 weeks
End-to-end from kickoff to readout
Fixed-fee
Credited against deployment
3 candidates
Investable worker opportunities, ranked
1 readout
IC-grade report your board can act on
/ 01
What this is

Diligence on your firm, before we sell you software.

Most AI vendor engagements start with a pilot. We start with diligence, on your data, your processes, your economic surface, because a pilot without that diligence is just a demo.

For who

GP and LP leadership

CIO, COO, head of finance, head of tax. The people who own the decision and the budget.

  • CIO / CFO / COO sponsorship
  • Board or IC visibility
  • Operational accountability
For when

Before any AI buying decision

When the firm has decided AI is on the roadmap but doesn’t yet know which workers, where, or in what order.

  • Pre-vendor selection
  • Pre-budget approval
  • Pre-pilot scoping
For what

An investable opportunity list

Three ranked worker opportunities with sized economics, deployment plans, and a clear go/no-go for each.

  • Sized cost-savings cases
  • Sequenced deployment plan
  • Vendor-agnostic recommendations
/ 02
The phases

Three phases. Six weeks. One readout.

The engagement is fixed-scope. No discovery creep, no surprise change orders. Each phase has named deliverables, named owners, and a gated handoff.

01
Surface mapping
Weeks 1–2 · 5 working sessions

We sit with your operating teams, fund accounting, tax, IR, deal teams, and map the work. Not what the org chart says they do. What they actually do, what they look at, and which artifacts they produce on a clock.

Why this phase: the cost of a worker isn’t in the model; it’s in the document graph the worker reads. If we don’t understand the documents, the pilot fails.

ArtifactAn operational map of your firm: every recurring workpaper, its inputs, its owners, and its current cost.
02
Economic sizing
Weeks 3–4 · 3 working sessions

We take the operational map and put numbers on it, hours, fully-loaded cost, error rates, season concentration, audit drag. We rank every candidate worker by economics and by deployability, not just by demo appeal.

Why this phase: AI is a unit-cost decision. If we can’t size the savings against the deployment cost, the firm shouldn’t buy anything yet, and we’ll tell you that.

ArtifactA ranked opportunity list with sized cost-savings cases, deployment timelines, and a go/no-go recommendation per candidate.
03
Deployment plan & readout
Weeks 5–6 · IC-grade report

For the top three candidates, we write a deployment plan, sequenced, staffed, and budgeted. We present to your leadership, IC, or board in their own format. You leave with a document your CFO can sign off on.

Why this phase: a recommendation that doesn’t survive your IC is worthless. The readout is built to survive it, vendor-agnostic, sized, sequenced, with risks named.

ArtifactA board-ready readout with three deployment plans, a sequencing recommendation, and a 12-month roadmap.
/ 03
Engagement team & investment

Senior people. Fixed fee. Credited if you deploy.

This is not an associate-staffed engagement. The team that runs your readiness is the team that has run real deployments, and the fee is credited against any production deployment you sign with us in the following year.

Engagement team

Every engagement is led by an Aktus partner with prior experience as a controller, tax partner, or senior allocator. They are supported by a research engineer who has shipped production workers, and a deployment lead who has run them at SOC 2 Type II.

No associates. No "AI strategist" titles. People who have done the work.
Investment
A fixed fee, billed across the 6 weeks. No expenses, no change orders. Travel inclusive.
Credited against deployment. If you sign a production deployment with Aktus within 12 months of the readout, 100% of the engagement fee is credited against the first year of that contract.

Sovereign by default, for diligence too.

The engagement runs inside your perimeter. We do not take your LPAs, GLs, or partner data out of your environment. Working sessions are conducted under your standard NDA and SOC 2 controls.

/ 04
Frequently asked

What firms ask before they engage.

Why pay for diligence? Other vendors do this for free.
Because free diligence is a sales process. We charge for the same reason your strategy consultants do, so the recommendation isn’t shaped by a downstream commission. If the right answer for your firm is to not deploy AI yet, we will tell you that, and the fee is the only reason we can.
Will you recommend only Aktus workers?
No. The readout is vendor-agnostic. If a candidate worker is better served by an off-the-shelf product, by a workflow change with no AI, or by another vendor, we say so, and we name the alternative. Our credit-against-deployment structure aligns us with the right answer, not with selling Aktus.
What if our data isn’t ready?
That is one of the most common findings. The readout will include a data-readiness work plan, what to clean, what to consolidate, and what to leave alone, sequenced ahead of any worker deployment. We have seen firms whose first investment is six months of data hygiene before any AI buys. That is a valid outcome.
How is this different from a McKinsey AI assessment?
Two ways. First, the team running your engagement has shipped production AI workers in alts, not just slides about them. Second, the readout is a deployment plan, not a market study. If our recommendation is to deploy, we can be operational the week after sign-off.
Can we cancel mid-engagement?
Yes. The engagement is structured as three phased deliverables. You can stop at any phase boundary; the fee is pro-rated and the artifacts produced to that point are yours. We have not had a customer stop short, but the option matters.
/ 05
What firms leave with

A board-ready answer to "what now."

Document

IC-grade readout

A fully-written report your CIO, CFO, or board can read and act on. Sized, sequenced, and vendor-agnostic.

Plan

12-month roadmap

A quarter-by-quarter sequencing recommendation across your top three opportunities, including dependencies and risks.

Optionality

Credit toward deployment

A 12-month window to convert the engagement fee into deployment dollars, with no obligation to do so.

Start with clarity, not a vendor.

A scoped pilot is two months away. Begin with the work that makes the pilot worth doing.