EMPOWERED BY ALICE · CORPORATE AI ADVISORY
AI by Design
Decide what AI should do for your business before anyone buys a licence. A method for adopting AI in the right order, built for established Australian businesses.
Book an initial consultationEveryone says your business should be doing AI
Almost nobody can tell you what for. You run an established business: a professional practice, a firm with 10 to 30 staff and real work moving through it every day. The pressure to adopt AI is constant.
AI by Design is for owners and leadership teams who want it done properly: chosen on purpose, built into real workflows, used by the actual team, with the risks handled before they become incidents.
What you actually want
You do not want an AI strategy. You want quotes going out in hours instead of days. Proposal responses that stop chewing a week of your best person's time. The knowledge of your 20-year veterans captured somewhere it keeps working after they retire. Reports, client emails and site paperwork drafted to 80 per cent, so your people finish the last 20 instead of starting from blank.
That is not a software purchase. It is a design job.
The smart things you have already tried
You bought a few Copilot licences because they came with the Microsoft stack. Someone ran a lunch-and-learn. A couple of younger staff are pasting things into free ChatGPT accounts. There may even be a chatbot demo that impressed everyone for a fortnight and has not been opened since.
None of that was careless. It is the standard sequence: buy the tool, then go looking for a problem to point it at. That sequence burns money and staff trust in businesses far larger than yours, and it fails for the same reason every time. The tool came first. The work came second.
Two gaps hiding in almost every business right now
Two quiet facts, and both become advantages for the businesses that move on them early.
ALREADY HAPPENING
Free AI tools are seeing your data
If anyone on your team uses the free versions of ChatGPT or Claude, whatever they paste (quotes, client files, contract terms) leaves your control, and on free accounts it can be used as training data.
That is not a scandal. It is a default setting, and it is closed with the right business accounts and the right configuration. Most businesses have not closed it, because nobody has told them it is open.
ALMOST NOBODY HAS ONE
A written AI policy
Most businesses have no rules for AI. What staff may use, what data may go where, who reviews what: none of it written down. Which means every staff member is writing their own policy, quietly, one paste at a time.
A clear policy, set early, reads as leadership. Your clients, your insurer and your next senior hire all notice the business that has this sorted.
Getting them right early is the cheapest advantage in the whole AI conversation.
Your business is not behind
Most AI marketing is engineered to make you feel late. You are not late. The raw material AI needs (your trade knowledge, your client relationships, the way your best people make decisions) is already in the building. What has been missing is the order of operations: understand the work first, decide where AI belongs, build only what earns its place, and stay with it until your team actually uses it.
That order has a name.
Book an initial consultationSix phases. One gate.
The method opens up to understand your business, narrows to commit, and only builds what survives the gate in the middle.
01
Discover
We need to understand the business before proposing anything. How the work flows, where the time leaks, what lives only in someone's head.
02
Define
We narrow down the two to four workflows worth touching, named specifically enough to build against. A priority map, not a wish list.
03
The Design Decision
The gate. For every candidate: should this be AI at all? Some pass. Some get parked. Some become simple process fixes instead.
04
Develop
We build only what passed. Small, safe, reversible pilots inside real workflows, with guardrails attached from day one. What we build, we build in Claude.
05
Deliver
Train the team, embed the change, drive adoption. This is where most AI projects quietly die, so this is where the effort goes.
06
Evolve
Measure what worked, retire what did not, scale what did, and feed the next cycle. AI adoption is a capability, not a project.
The question most AI projects skip
Should this be solved with AI at all? Every opportunity in your business has to pass that question before anything is built. Some pass and become pilots. Some get parked until your governance matures. Some turn out to be a template, a checklist or a handover fix, and never needed AI at all. And some sit outside my lane: those go on the roadmap, in writing, for your IT provider or another specialist to pick up.
When the answer is no, you hear no, and you do not pay for AI you did not need. Your IT provider will notice the difference. So will your staff.
Clear edges: who owns what
AI engagements sprawl when nobody draws the edges. This one has its edges in writing before any work begins.
THE STRATEGIST
What I own
Discovery, workflow mapping, the Design Decision, pilot design, training, governance guidance and the adoption work. The thinking, and the accountability for it landing.
YOUR IT PROVIDER
What they own
Licences, tenants, security configuration, access, devices and support. I coordinate with them and flag what needs validating. I do not replace them.
YOU
What you own
Sponsorship, budget, internal decisions, and the final say on policy. It is your business. The method keeps it that way.
Two tools. One brain.
Most teams are already using ChatGPT, often with real results. We keep it. Forcing everyone into a single tool creates friction, and friction kills adoption. Instead, the tools your people already use get secured properly: business accounts, training switched off, clear rules about what goes where.
And what we build for the business, we build in Claude.
✦
ChatGPT: kept and secured
Your team keeps the tool they know for day-to-day work. We move them onto business accounts with data controls, so what they paste stays yours.
✦
Claude: the brain of the business
Where your organisation's knowledge lives: how you quote, write and decide. Roles and permissions control who can see and do what, and your IT provider can inspect all of it.
✦
The gold extraction
The knowledge in your senior people's heads, drawn out and encoded into the brain, so it keeps working when they are on site, on leave, or retired.
Who this is for, and who it is not
Worth a conversation if
✓ You own the business or sit on its leadership, and you would sponsor this personally.
✓ You have roughly 10 to 30 staff and real workflows under pressure.
✓ You want fewer, better AI moves, with one person accountable for them landing.
Not the right fit if
— You want a chatbot on the website by Friday.
— You are after someone to put AI everywhere while leadership watches from a distance.
— A tool demo would satisfy you.
The method only works with the owner in the room.
Who you would be working with
Alice Taugs-Pisani is a multi-award-winning business strategist based in Adelaide. She has spent years turning the knowledge in founders' and experts' heads into systems their businesses can run on, and she runs her own company on the same AI foundations she recommends to clients.
AI by Design exists because established businesses kept asking her the same question: we know AI matters, where do we start? The method on this page is her answer, and she delivers it personally.
She is the strategist in the room, not the systems administrator. Your IT provider keeps their role, your leadership keeps its authority, and your team gets AI that fits the way they already work.
The next step is a conversation, not a contract
One phone call, 30 minutes, at a time you pick. No slides, no obligation, no junior consultant. We talk about your business, where the pressure sits, and whether this method fits it.
If it fits, the work starts with a fixed-fee diagnostic that maps your AI opportunities against your readiness and hands you a roadmap you own outright, whether or not we build together afterwards. If it does not fit, you will hear that on the call, along with what I would do in your position.
Book an initial consultation