The worst outcome of an AI project is not that it fails. It is that it works, nobody understands it, and a year later the person who commissioned it cannot say what it does, what it costs to run, or what should happen next. The system quietly becomes something the business is afraid to touch.
So every Ishigai engagement closes the same way. Not with a handover email and an invoice, but with a documented picture of what exists and an honest view of what to do with it.
What you are left with
- A plain description of what was built, in language a non-technical director can follow, including the decisions that were made and why.
- How to run it and change it, so your team is not guessing when something needs adjusting.
- What it costs to operate, month by month, with the parts that scale with usage called out.
- A ranked roadmap of what to improve, automate or scale next, ordered by return rather than by what is technically interesting.
- The honest "leave it alone" list, because knowing what not to extend is worth as much as knowing what to build.
A system nobody understands is a liability, however well it works.
Why this is not sold separately
Handover is not an upsell, it is part of the job. Charging extra to explain what we built would be charging you to undo a problem we created. It is included in every engagement, and it is the reason the audit comes first: a build that started with a clear picture of the opportunity is a build that can be explained at the end.
You are not tied to us afterwards. The handover is written so your own team, or another provider, can pick it up. Most clients have us keep it running, monitored and tuned each month, through managed AI agents from £379 a month. That stays your choice.
How the roadmap gets written
By the time a build finishes we have seen how your business actually runs, which is more than any audit reveals on its own. That is the most valuable moment to say what should happen next, and the roadmap reflects it.
- What the build revealed, including the things that turned out to matter more than expected.
- What is now cheap to add, because the foundations are already there.
- What should wait, and what would have to be true first.
- What to measure, so in six months you can tell whether it worked.
Who this matters most to
Firms without an in-house technical team, where the person who signed off the project is also the person who will be asked about it in a board meeting. If you cannot explain a system in your own words, you cannot defend the spend, and you cannot make a good decision about extending it.
Frequently asked questions
Is this something I buy separately?
No. It is the closing phase of every Ishigai build, included in the engagement. There is no separate fee and no version of the work that leaves it out.
What do I actually receive?
Documentation of what was built and why, how to run and change it, what it costs to operate, and a ranked roadmap of what to improve, automate or scale next.
Do I need you to maintain it afterwards?
No. It is written so your team or another provider can take it on. Ongoing support is available if you want it, but nothing is built to depend on us.
What if I inherited a system somebody else built?
That is a different piece of work and usually starts with an audit, since the first question is whether what exists is worth keeping.
Related services
- AI Opportunity Audit: a fixed-price, ranked and costed map of where AI saves your firm hours. From £750.
- Process Automation: repetitive admin turned into monitored pipelines. Fixed price.
- AI Agents: support, research and data-gathering handled end to end, with a person on the decisions that matter.
- Worked example: the full audit deliverable for an 18-person recruitment agency.
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