■ Services

How we engage.

Below are the shapes most engagements take — starting points, not a fixed menu. Every one is fixed-scope with quantified outcomes and no hourly meters, each is designed to stand alone and be worth its price, and scope, sequence, and combination get set in the first conversation.

Engagement 01

AI Value Diagnostic

The decision-grade answer to “where should our AI dollars actually go?” Delivered through stakeholder interviews, a systems review, and a working session where your team scores the use cases with us — because co-owned priorities are the ones that get funded.

Readiness assessment across six data & AI dimensions
Use-case portfolio scored by financial impact
Build-vs-buy vendor landscape for your segment
12-month roadmap with a quantified business case
A 90-day plan you can start Monday

Editions include the Credit Platform Diagnostic, Portco AI Diagnostic, PRT Data Readiness Assessment, Underwriting AI Readiness Sprint, and a two-week buy-side AI due diligence built for the deal clock.

Engagement 02

Document-to-Decision Sprint

A working document-intelligence pipeline on your documents — credit agreements, submissions, loan tapes, participant data, medical records. Success metrics are written into the SOW before we start.

Ingestion → extraction → validation → human-in-the-loop approval
Accuracy benchmarked against a jointly-labeled validation set
Exception routing so expert attention goes where the model is least confident
The governance memo — model risk, controls, audit trail — that makes it defensible
Deployed in your environment; you keep everything from day one

Engagement 03

Fractional AI Leadership

Ongoing senior AI leadership without the full-time executive hire or the six-month search. Three tiers by intensity, a quarterly commitment, and a one-page value memo every month so you always know exactly what you’re paying for.

Roadmap execution and delivery oversight
Vendor selection and build-vs-buy decisions
Hiring, team design, and governance
Board, sponsor, and LP reporting
Shared coverage available across several portfolio companies under one sponsor

Work that doesn’t fit the three above

Plenty of useful engagements are smaller or stranger than these: a two-week vendor selection, a board or investment-committee education session, a second opinion on an in-flight build, an AI section for a fundraise or exit narrative, or a short advisory sprint on a single decision. If what you need isn’t described here, ask — the shape follows the problem, not a service catalogue.

Vendor-neutral by policy

Operating Alpha accepts no referral fees, commissions, or reseller margin from any technology vendor. Recommendations answer exactly one question: what is right for your firm. Pricing is fixed-fee and scoped in the first conversation.