This Operational Diagnostic gives Maverix Studio a complete map of your business operations. The information gathered here identifies automation opportunities, inefficiencies, and quick wins that can immediately improve how your business runs.
Our AI agent conducts structured interviews with your CEO and key stakeholders. These conversations happen on your schedule via WhatsApp or video call. The agent works through each section of this framework, asking follow-up questions and documenting responses in real time.
After the AI has gathered baseline data, Darren leads a live session (in-person or Zoom) to dig deeper into the highest-impact areas, clarify ambiguities, and begin prioritizing automation opportunities.
Every question maps to one of four diagnostic lenses. The output is a scored heatmap of automation opportunities, ranked by ROI, plus a prioritized implementation roadmap.
| Lens | What We're Looking For |
|---|---|
| People | Who does what? Bottlenecks, single points of failure, over-reliance on specific individuals. |
| Processes | Repeatable workflows. Documented vs. tribal knowledge. Where things break down. |
| Tools | Software, platforms, systems in use. Integrated or siloed? What's the tech debt? |
| Data | What data exists? Where does it live? Is it accessible, clean, and actionable? |
Establish baseline context about the business — size, structure, and current state. This is where the AI agent starts.
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | What does your company do? Describe it like you're explaining to someone outside your industry. |
| 2 | How long has the company been operating? |
| 3 | What's your current annual revenue range? (Under $1M / $1–5M / $5–20M / $20M+) |
| 4 | How many full-time employees? Part-time or contractors? |
| 5 | What industry or vertical do you primarily operate in? |
| 6 | Who are your top 3 competitors? |
| 7 | What's your primary revenue model? (Product sales, services, subscriptions, etc.) |
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | Walk me through your org chart. Who reports to whom? |
| 2 | Which departments or functions exist? (Sales, ops, marketing, finance, etc.) |
| 3 | How many people are in each department? |
| 4 | Are there roles where one person wears multiple hats? |
| 5 | Who are the key decision-makers for operations, technology, and finance? |
| 6 | Do you have remote or distributed team members? |
This is often the most revealing part. Let the client talk freely.
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | If you could wave a magic wand and fix one thing in your business tomorrow, what would it be? |
| 2 | What keeps you up at night operationally? |
| 3 | Where do you feel like you're wasting the most time or money? |
| 4 | Have you tried to fix any of these problems before? What happened? |
| 5 | On a scale of 1–10, how would you rate your current operational efficiency? |
Document every significant workflow. This is the core of the diagnostic and feeds directly into the automation heatmap.
For each major function, walk through the end-to-end workflow.
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | Walk me through what happens from the moment a new lead/customer comes in to when they're fully onboarded. |
| 2 | What does your sales process look like step by step? Who's involved at each stage? |
| 3 | How do you fulfill orders or deliver your service? What are the steps? |
| 4 | Describe your invoicing and payment collection process from start to finish. |
| 5 | How does customer support work? What happens when someone has an issue? |
| 6 | Walk me through your hiring process from job posting to first day. |
| 7 | How do you handle inventory, procurement, or vendor management? |
For each process identified above, the agent drills into these specifics:
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | How often does this process run? (Daily, weekly, per transaction, etc.) |
| 2 | How long does it take start to finish? |
| 3 | How many people touch this process? |
| 4 | Is this documented anywhere, or is it tribal knowledge? |
| 5 | What triggers this process to start? |
| 6 | What's the output or end result? |
| 7 | Where does it typically break down or get delayed? |
| 8 | Are there manual data entry steps or copy-paste between systems? |
| 9 | What would happen if the person who owns this process left tomorrow? |
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | How do teams communicate internally? (Slack, email, meetings, etc.) |
| 2 | How do tasks get assigned and tracked? |
| 3 | Where do handoffs between departments happen? How smooth are they? |
| 4 | How many recurring meetings per week? Which ones actually matter? |
| 5 | How do you share files and documents internally? |
Map the entire tech stack to identify integration gaps, redundancies, and automation-ready tools.
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | What software do you use to run your business? Walk me through everything — CRM, accounting, project management, communication, etc. |
| 2 | For each tool: how many people use it, and how critical is it? (Nice-to-have vs. can't live without) |
| 3 | What's your approximate monthly spend on software/SaaS tools? |
| 4 | Are any of these tools integrated with each other? Which ones? |
| 5 | Are you using spreadsheets as a primary system for tracking anything important? |
| 6 | Do you have any custom-built software or internal tools? |
| 7 | What tools have you tried and abandoned? Why? |
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | What reports do you look at regularly to understand business performance? |
| 2 | How are those reports generated? Manually or automatically? |
| 3 | How long does it take to pull the numbers you need for a key decision? |
| 4 | Is your data in one place, or scattered across multiple systems? |
| 5 | Do you have a single source of truth for customer data? Financial data? |
| 6 | Are there reports or dashboards you wish you had but don't? |
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | How do you manage passwords and access to systems? |
| 2 | Do you have compliance requirements? (HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI, etc.) |
| 3 | When someone leaves, what's the process for revoking access? |
| 4 | Do you have backups for critical data? When did you last test a restore? |
Understand the financial plumbing — where money flows, where it gets stuck, and where automation can tighten things up.
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | How do customers pay you? What payment methods and platforms? |
| 2 | What does your invoicing process look like? Who creates invoices, and how? |
| 3 | What's your average time to get paid (days sales outstanding)? |
| 4 | How do you handle overdue invoices? Is there a collections process? |
| 5 | Do you have recurring revenue? How is it managed and tracked? |
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | How do you track and approve expenses? |
| 2 | What's your purchasing/procurement process for supplies or services? |
| 3 | How many vendors do you work with regularly? How do you manage those relationships? |
| 4 | Who has spending authority, and what are the approval thresholds? |
| 5 | How do you reconcile bank statements and credit card charges? |
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | How often do you review financial statements? |
| 2 | Who prepares your financials — internal team, bookkeeper, or accountant? |
| 3 | How long does it take to close the books each month? |
| 4 | What financial KPIs do you track? How? |
| 5 | Do you have a budgeting/forecasting process? How does it work? |
Map the full customer lifecycle — friction points, retention risks, and automation opportunities in the client experience.
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | Where do your leads come from? (Referrals, ads, inbound, outbound, etc.) |
| 2 | How do you track leads through the pipeline? |
| 3 | What's your average close rate and sales cycle length? |
| 4 | How do you follow up with prospects? Is any of that automated? |
| 5 | What does a proposal or quote process look like? |
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | What happens after a customer says yes? Walk me through onboarding. |
| 2 | How long does onboarding take? |
| 3 | What information do you collect from new customers? |
| 4 | How do you set expectations on timelines and deliverables? |
| 5 | What's the handoff from sales to operations/delivery? |
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | How do you measure customer satisfaction? |
| 2 | What's your churn rate? Do you know why customers leave? |
| 3 | How do you handle complaints or escalations? |
| 4 | Do you have a process for upselling or cross-selling? |
| 5 | How do you collect and act on customer feedback? |
Gauge appetite, capacity, and readiness for automation and AI adoption. This directly feeds the heatmap scoring.
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | Are you currently using any automation? (Zapier, Make, scripts, macros, etc.) |
| 2 | Have you experimented with AI tools? (ChatGPT, Copilot, etc.) How's it going? |
| 3 | What tasks do employees complain about being repetitive or tedious? |
| 4 | Are there processes where you're paying humans to do what software could handle? |
| 5 | What's the most manual, time-consuming process in your business right now? |
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | How does your team generally feel about adopting new technology? |
| 2 | Who would champion an automation initiative internally? |
| 3 | What's your appetite for change? Quick wins only, or open to bigger overhauls? |
| 4 | Do you have budget allocated for technology improvements this year? |
| 5 | What would success look like 90 days after we start working together? |
| 6 | What's the one thing that, if automated, would make the biggest difference to your day-to-day? |
| # | Question / Prompt |
|---|---|
| 1 | Are there processes you'd never want automated? Why? |
| 2 | Any regulatory or compliance constraints we should know about? |
| 3 | What's your biggest concern about automation or AI? |
| 4 | Have you had a bad experience with a technology implementation? |
| 5 | Any upcoming changes (mergers, new products, expansion) that would affect this? |
This section is internal to Maverix — not shared with the client. These are instructions for the AI agent conducting stakeholder interviews.
Be conversational, not interrogative. You're a curious consultant, not an auditor. Use language like "Walk me through…" and "Help me understand…" rather than rigid question-answer format.
Don't just read questions from a list. When a stakeholder mentions something interesting, follow the thread. If they say "our invoicing is a mess," dig into that before moving on. The framework is a guide, not a script.
Each interview session should be 20–30 minutes max. Cover 1–2 sections per session. Always start by recapping what was covered last time and asking if anything has changed.
After each session, generate a structured summary mapped back to framework sections. Flag areas needing follow-up or deeper exploration in the live workshop.
Not every stakeholder answers every section. Route interviews based on role:
| Stakeholder | Primary Sections |
|---|---|
| CEO / Owner | Sections 1 (all), 2.1, 4.3, 5.1, 6 (all) |
| Operations Lead | Sections 2 (all), 3.1, 4.1–4.2 |
| Sales / Marketing | Sections 5 (all), 2.3 |
| Finance / Accounting | Sections 4 (all), 3.2 |
| IT / Tech Lead | Sections 3 (all), 6.1, 6.3 |
| Individual Contributors | Section 2.2 (for their specific processes) |
If the agent encounters any of these during interviews, flag immediately for the live workshop:
Single point of failure — one person holds all knowledge of a critical process
No documentation exists for any core process
Revenue-critical process relies entirely on spreadsheets
Significant data stored only on personal devices or local machines
Customer data is not backed up or secured
Team expresses strong resistance to change
Compliance requirements are not being met
Financial controls are weak or non-existent (no approval workflows)
Once the diagnostic is complete, Maverix Studio delivers four outputs that form the foundation for every engagement.
A visual, scored matrix of every process documented in this diagnostic, color-coded by automation potential (high / medium / low) and estimated impact — time saved, cost reduced, error reduction.
3–5 automations that can be implemented within 30 days with minimal disruption. Low-hanging fruit that demonstrates immediate value.
A phased 90-day plan prioritizing automation initiatives by ROI, complexity, and dependencies. This becomes the working document for the engagement.
Specific tool and platform recommendations based on the client's existing stack, budget, and readiness. No unnecessary rip-and-replace — we work with what you've got wherever possible.