A scored, sized backlog
Two hundred submitted ideas become a ranked portfolio once there is a scoring model and a capacity model behind it. Ranking by evidence rather than volume is what keeps month seven as productive as month one.
AI CENTER OF EXCELLENCE
We build alongside you, and the value is something we create together.
A center of excellence is not a team with a name. It is an intake process, a scoring model, a set of gates, a reusable technical foundation and a standard for what “done” means. We have stood these up inside Fortune 200 manufacturers and global services firms.
WHY MOST OF THEM STALL
Three failure modes we design against explicitly.
PATTERN 01
FAILURE 02
The pilot museum
Fourteen impressive demos, none in production, because nobody defined what production readiness means or who owns a solution after go-live.
FAILURE 03
The consultancy annuity
The COE exists but every solution requires the partner who built it. Reuse is zero, cost per use case never falls, and the exit gets more expensive each year.
WHAT WE INSTALL
Six components, all of them yours when we leave.
01
Intake & scoring
A structured way to propose work and a scoring model on value, feasibility, data readiness, risk and reuse. Ranked lists, capacity-aware, defensible in a steering meeting.
02
Stage gates
Five gates from qualified idea to scaled production, each with named exit criteria, an accountable owner and a kill decision that is genuinely available.
03
Technical foundation
flexday.ai as the shared platform: ontology, connectors, patterns, components and evaluation harness. This is what makes solution five cheap.
04
Standards & guardrails
What accuracy must be proven, what must have a human in the loop, what documentation risk and audit require, what a model card contains.
05
Operating model
Who does what: federated business ownership, central platform and standards, embedded builders. Plus how solutions are supported after go-live.
06
Capability build
Your people trained on the platform and paired on live work. Measured by how much of the portfolio they lead, not by attendance.
THE GATES
G1 to G5, and what each one really asks
G1 · QUALIFIED
Is this worth anyone's time?
Named business owner, articulated value, plausible data. Most submissions stop here, which is the point.
G2 · FEASIBLE
Can it actually be built?
Data access confirmed, ontology sketched, pattern identified, effort estimated with a real number.
G3 · PROVEN
Does it work on real data?
Working solution, golden set built, accuracy measured against an agreed threshold. Not a demo.
G4 · PRODUCTION
Will it survive contact with users?
Security and risk sign-off, monitoring, support model, named owner, change process, rollback plan.
G5 · SCALED
Is it delivering the value claimed?
Adoption and benefit measured against the G1 case. Reusable components harvested for the next build.
SCORING
How a shortlist gets made
Every candidate is scored on five dimensions with defined anchors, so a score means the same thing across functions. In a recent transportation program this reduced a large use-case inventory to three per business area, and those nine carried a commitment to show measured results within 180 days.
| DIMENSION | WHAT IT ASKS |
|---|---|
| Value | Hours, dollars or risk removed, quantified by the business owner, not by us |
| Feasibility | Does the pattern exist, is the reasoning within reach, how much is genuinely novel |
| Data readiness | Does the data exist, can we access it, and does it actually contain the answer |
| Risk | Regulatory exposure, consequence of a wrong answer, human oversight required |
| Reuse | What does this leave behind that makes the next three use cases cheaper |
COE SPECIFICATIONFLEXDAY.AI
- DELIVERABLES
- Intake and scoring model, G1–G5 gate definitions, standards and guardrails, operating model, platform foundation, capability plan
- TYPICAL DURATION
- 90–180 days to a functioning COE running its own portfolio, in parallel with live use case delivery
- PARALLEL DELIVERY
- The COE is stood up while real solutions ship, a governance model with no delivery behind it never gets adopted
- MEASURED BY
- Percentage of the portfolio led by your people, cost per use case over time, gate throughput, benefit realized at G5
- REFERENCES
- Stood up inside a Fortune 200 packaging manufacturer with reference plant programs, and in transportation with a two-track operating model
The point is that eventually you don't need us.
Measured by how much of the portfolio your people lead, and by whether cost per use case actually falls.