What AI is actually running
in your business, and who owns it.
Most founders can name one tool. The real answer is longer, and some of it sits on an account the company doesn't control. Here's the thirty-minute version of finding out.
Ask a founder what AI is running in their business and you usually get the name of one tool. The real answer is longer than that, and some of it sits on an account the company doesn't control.
This isn't a security lecture. The risk at a 5 to 50 person company isn't that someone breaks in. It's that the setup doing real work lives on one laptop, was never written down, and walks out the door when that person does.
The inventory below takes about thirty minutes. It's four questions asked of four groups of people, in a specific order, because asking them out of order gets you polite answers instead of true ones.
The four questions
Ask in this order. The order is doing work.
What did you use AI for last week?
Last week, not in general. General questions get you the tool the company pays for. Specific ones get you the tool they actually opened.
Ask individuals, never a room. In a room the answer converges on whatever the most senior person said first.
What you're listening for: a task, not a product name. "I had it rewrite the intake summary" is the finding. "ChatGPT" isn't.
Whose account is it on?
Company account, personal account, or a free tier with no account at all. All three are common and only one of them survives that person leaving.
Nobody is in trouble here, and it's worth saying that out loud before you ask, or you'll get the answer people think you want.
What you're listening for: anything on a personal login. That work isn't yours, and you can't audit, transfer, or recover it.
If you were out for two weeks, could someone else run it?
The most useful question in the set, because it's answerable honestly and the answer is almost never yes.
What makes a setup transferable isn't documentation in general. It's whether the instructions the tool receives exist somewhere other than in the head of the person typing them.
What you're listening for: "I'd have to walk them through it." That means the working part is undocumented, and the tool isn't the asset. The person is.
What would break first if it stopped working tomorrow?
This separates the tools that are convenient from the tools that are load-bearing. Most companies find they have one or two of the second kind and didn't know which ones they were.
What you're listening for: anything that touches a customer, a deadline, or money. Those are the ones that need an owner and a check. The rest can stay informal.
Who to ask, and in what order
Four groups, going outward from the work. Start closest to the output and finish with the people who buy the software.
| Order | Who | Why them | What they surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | Whoever produces the output | Closest to the actual work, least likely to editorialize | The undocumented setup doing real volume |
| Second | Their direct manager | Knows what is supposed to be happening | The gap between assumed process and real process |
| Third | Ops or office manager | Sees the invoices and the logins | Tools nobody has opened in 90 days, still billing |
| Fourth | You | You approved something you've forgotten about | The pilot from last year that quietly became production |
Three things that keep turning up
One tool on a personal account doing real work. Usually the most effective thing in the building. It's also the one with no backup, no audit trail, and no way to hand it over.
One undocumented instruction set carrying volume. Somebody wrote a very good prompt eight months ago and has been pasting it in ever since. Nobody else has seen it. This is the highest-value thing to write down and the cheapest to lose.
One subscription nobody has opened in 90 days. Cancel it. It's the only item on this list that pays you back the same week.
What to do with what you found
Sort every item into one of three piles. Don't try to fix anything while you're still collecting, or you'll stop collecting.
Load-bearing and undocumented
This is the only urgent pile. Get the instructions out of the person's head and into a file this week. You aren't automating anything yet. You're making sure the thing that already works survives a resignation.
Load-bearing and documented
Give it a named owner and a review schedule. This pile is where the six-point check applies.
Convenient
Leave it alone. Personal tools that make one person faster aren't a governance problem, and treating them like one is how you get people to stop telling you what they use.
Where to start
Do it yourself in one afternoon
Four questions, everybody, one sitting. At this size you can talk to the whole company and the whole company is the sample.
Sample by function, not headcount
Two people from each function that touches a customer or a deliverable. Full coverage isn't worth the calendar time and doesn't change the findings.
Skip to question 3
If you can already name the person the business depends on, you don't need the inventory to tell you. Go get their instructions written down.
Why we run this before anything else
You can't install a system on top of a business that doesn't know what it's already running. Half of what gets found in an inventory makes the build smaller, because the useful thing already exists and just needs an owner.
MarqueeOS turns the load-bearing pile into a system that survives people leaving. The inventory is the part you can do without us, and you should.
Keep reading
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Read the guide → Decisions · 6 min readBuild It In-House Or Buy It: 7 Questions That Decide
The strongest predictor of this decision is question one, and it points away from hiring anyone. Includes the four cases where we're the wrong call.
Read the guide →Not sure what you
would even find?
Thirty minutes. We'll run the four questions against your business live and you'll leave with the list, whether or not we work together.
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