AI Strategy That
Ships Code.
A full-time Chief AI Officer costs around $400K a year. A Fractional CAIO gives you the same executive-level AI leadership, on a part-time basis. Strategy plus implementation. Embedded in your operations. Deployed in your infrastructure. Working code, real agents, custom systems — AI built for your business.
Big 4 Consultancy
$500K+ engagement. 12-week discovery phase. Generic AI deck. Junior consultants. No production code.
Fractional CAIO
$5,000 workshop. Custom project. Working software in your infrastructure. Senior engineer who ships. Zero data egress.
// NOT SLIDEWARE. PRODUCTION CODE.
Big 4 Firms Sell Strategy.
We Ship Production Code.
Enterprise Price Tag
Deloitte, Accenture, McKinsey start at half a million. Their model requires armies of junior consultants — you pay for the brand and the overhead, not the output.
Discovery Phase That Delivers a Deck
A Big 4 AI engagement spends 12 weeks interviewing stakeholders, building PowerPoint decks, and delivering a "roadmap" — then hands you a PDF and leaves.
Of Production Code
The engagement ends with a strategy document. No embedded AI. No working pipeline. No code in your infrastructure. You paid for a diagnosis with no treatment plan.
What You Get With Beyond SaaS
- ▸ Production AI, not slideware. We ship working code inside your infrastructure.
- ▸ Senior engineer who builds. Not a team of junior consultants. Michael writes code, runs pipelines, and debugs your actual data.
- ▸ Data sovereignty. Every model runs in your VPC or on-prem. No data egress. No third-party APIs.
- ▸ Deployed in days, not quarters. Audit in week 1, pilot in week 2, production in week 3.
What Big 4 Gives You
- ▸ PowerPoint deck with AI strategy
- ▸ Junior consultants billing $400/hr
- ▸ Cloud-only solutions (more vendor lock-in)
- ▸ 12-week discovery before any implementation
How I'd think about it.
The problems I'd look for, the approaches I'd take, and where I'd start — in plain language.
// THE PROBLEM
OTA commissions eating 22% of revenue. Complaint response time averaging 47 hours. Guest data scattered across properties — no single view of the guest.
// THE APPROACH
One inbox for every channel, with AI drafting replies to the routine stuff. A pricing assistant watching local demand signals. Review data pulled into one place to surface recurring complaints.
// WHERE I'D START
Guest messaging triage first — it's where the lost bookings hide, and it's the fastest thing to verify in a workshop.
// THE PROBLEM
Intake paperwork consuming hours of front-desk time every day. Prior auth and referrals moving at the speed of fax.
// THE APPROACH
Digital intake that pre-fills from existing records and flags what's missing before the patient arrives. Scheduling support that fills cancellations from the waitlist. Everything inside the practice's systems.
// WHERE I'D START
Intake triage first — measure the real per-patient intake time, then automate the document-heavy parts the staff never chose to do.
// THE PROBLEM
Dispatch coordination handled via spreadsheets and phone. Load matching slow, payment disputes dragging on for weeks.
// THE APPROACH
Ingest the broker feeds, match partials by route and weight, output a single consolidated dispatch sheet. One painful bottleneck, one targeted automation — running on hardware they already own.
// WHERE I'D START
The dispatch bottleneck first — it's specific, measurable, and expensive, which keeps the ROI math grounded.
Workshop → Project → Retainer.
Transparent Pricing. Clear Outcomes.
AI Strategy Workshop
2 weeks · $5,000 — A collaborative strategy engagement mapping your workflows, scoring automation potential, assessing data readiness, and delivering a prioritized implementation blueprint and ROI projection.
Project Engagement
2-6 weeks · $25K - $100K — Custom agentic pipelines built and deployed inside your infrastructure (VPC). Includes private model setup, vector database integration, error handling, and complete handoff documentation.
Fractional CAIO Retainer
$5K - $15K/mo — Ongoing AI leadership embedded in your operations. Michael manages strategy, vendor selection, data architecture, security/compliance, board reporting, and team building.
30-minute call. Straight answer on whether AI fits your problem.
The Fractional CAIO One-Pager
A one-page executive brief for CTOs and operations leaders. Covers: the AI implementation gap, the Fractional CAIO model, pricing structure, engagement process, and how ROI gets measured — with a worked illustrative example.
Just the information you need — as a direct PDF download.