Maku

Find where AI pays off, before you build.

A short, fixed-price engagement covering interviews, process mapping and a data check, ending in a scored shortlist of use cases and a priced pilot plan.

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How we work

The problem

Most AI spending starts with the answer, not the question.

A lot of AI budget gets spent backwards. Somebody picks a tool because a competitor uses it, or because a vendor pitched it well in a meeting, and only afterwards does anyone ask whether it solves a real problem. That order produces expensive pilots that never get renewed, and leaves teams quietly distrustful of the word AI.

We run this the other way round. Before anyone writes a line of code, we examine how your business runs today: what takes too long, what is error-prone, and what your team dreads doing every single week. Then we work out where a language model or an agent genuinely improves matters. Just as often the honest answer is that it doesn’t, at least not yet, and we will say so plainly.

This is the same thinking behind our approach to every project, AI or WordPress. Plan properly first. Then move fast once the plan is right, rather than moving fast in a direction nobody checked.

It also protects your budget from a common trap: buying a big, general-purpose platform when a small, specific tool would have done the job for a fraction of the cost. We’ve seen both sides of that mistake, and a short scoping engagement is cheap insurance against making it yourself.

What you get

A plan you can act on, with or without us.

Stakeholder interviews

Short conversations with the people who actually do the work, which is where the real friction and the genuine opportunities usually surface.

Process mapping

A clear picture of how key workflows run today, so we’re solving the actual process, not a guessed version of it.

Data readiness check

An honest look at whether the data behind each idea is usable now, or needs work first, before you spend on a build.

Scored use case shortlist

Every candidate idea ranked by likely value against how hard it is to build, so priority is obvious, not political.

A priced pilot plan

A defined first build for the strongest use case, with a fixed price attached and an agreed way to measure whether it actually worked.

A written report

Everything documented clearly enough to hand to another team, your own developers, or straight back to us to build.

Process

How the engagement runs.

Interviews

We talk to the people closest to the problem, across the teams most likely to be affected by or to benefit from AI.

Process and data mapping

We map the relevant workflows and check what data exists to support each candidate use case.

Scoring and shortlist

Every use case is scored on value and difficulty, so you can see clearly which ones are worth pursuing first.

Pilot plan and handover

We deliver the written plan and a priced pilot for the top use case, and walk through it with you in person.

Why Maku

Advice from people who also do the building.

A lot of AI strategy work comes from consultants who’ve never shipped a production system. Or from vendors whose recommendation always happens to be their own product. We build AI products and agents ourselves every week. Our advice reflects what’s genuinely achievable on a real budget and a real timeline, not a best-case pitch deck.

If a chatbot turns out to be the right first step, that’s covered on our AI chatbots page. If the answer points somewhere inside your existing WordPress site, we build that too, with no separate team or handoff to manage.

  • Fixed price against a defined scope, rather than open-ended consulting hours.
  • Vendor-neutral, so the resulting plan is yours to build with anyone, including us.
  • We’ll say “don’t build this yet” when that’s the honest answer.
  • We use these tools in delivery work every week, so the recommendations come from what we have shipped, not from a vendor briefing.

FAQ

Questions we get asked

Do we need this before building anything?

Not always. If you already know exactly what you want built and why, you can go straight to AI product development. This engagement is for when you suspect AI could help somewhere in the business but aren’t sure where, or you have three ideas and a limited budget for one.

How long does the engagement take?

It’s a short, fixed-price piece of work, not an open-ended consulting retainer. It runs over interviews, process mapping and a short data check, and ends with a written plan you can act on, with or without us.

What do we actually get at the end?

A shortlist of use cases scored by value and difficulty, a data readiness check for the ones worth pursuing, and a pilot plan with a price for the strongest option. It’s a document, not a slideshow of buzzwords.

Is the advice vendor-neutral, or are you just selling us a build?

We’re builders, so the advice is grounded in what’s actually achievable, not theoretical. You can take the plan to any team to build, including your own. We’d like to build it with you, but the plan works either way.

What if the answer is ‘don’t use AI here’?

Then that’s what we’ll tell you. Plenty of problems are better solved with a simpler fix, a better form, a cleaner process, or no change at all. We’d rather say that upfront than sell a build that was never going to pay off.

What does a pilot actually look like after this?

A small, fixed-scope build around the single strongest use case from your shortlist, with a defined deliverable and a clear way to measure whether it worked, before you commit to anything bigger.

AI

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Building something ambitious?

Send us a few honest paragraphs about what you’re building, who it’s for and when you need it live. We’ll reply with a straight answer.

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support@maku.au