Common questions before booking, scoping, or picking a tier.
The questions ops leaders ask before every AI Ops Audit, every Discovery Sprint, and every Tier 1 vs Tier 2 decision — answered in one place.
Section 01
AI Ops Audit — before the 30-min call.
Five questions we hear every week from ops leaders who’ve booked the free 30-min audit.
A 30-minute screen-share with a Clearfield ops builder. We walk your current stack, the workflows that cost you the most hours, and the AI tools you already use — or don’t. By the end, we tell you whether Tier 1, Tier 2, the Discovery Sprint, or none of the above is the right next move.
Before the call, you’ll fill out a short intake form with five fields: your email, company, team size, current AI tools (if any), and your top ops pain point. Bring the workflows you suspect are eating hours. No deck, no document — just the working knowledge of how your ops actually run.
The person who runs the workflows you want to automate. For most clients that’s the head of ops, a RevOps lead, or a COO. If you have an internal AI champion or tech lead, looping them in helps, but the call doesn’t require any technical depth to follow.
A written 1-pager summarizing your top AI opportunity, a build / buy / defer recommendation, and an honest read on whether Tier 1, Tier 2, the $2,500 Discovery Sprint, or another path entirely is the best next step. The artifact is yours whether you keep going with us or not.
Yes, the audit is free, and there is zero obligation. It’s a paid-by-Clearfield scoping conversation designed to decide whether a paid engagement is the right next move for you. If it’s not, we’ll say so directly.
Section 02
Discovery Sprint — the $2,500 scoping engagement.
Five questions we hear from ops leaders who’ve finished the audit and are ready to scope their first build.
A written blueprint that covers four things: workflow scope (the one process we’re building, end-to-end), opportunity sizing (a defensible low / mid / high dollar figure), tooling and integration plan, and a build / buy / defer recommendation. You can hand the blueprint to engineering, IT, or another vendor — it’s not contingent on Clearfield doing the build.
One week from kickoff. Sprints kick off within 2–3 business days of payment, and the written blueprint lands in your inbox by the end of week one. The only on-call commitment from you is a 30-min scope confirmation at the start and one ~45-min readout at the end.
Yes. The $2,500 Sprint fee is credited 100% toward any Tier 1 or Tier 2 Membership engagement you take in the 90 days after the Sprint. So the Sprint is effectively free if you proceed to a Membership engagement.
No. The Sprint produces a written artifact you can act on regardless of who builds the thing. About half of our Sprint clients proceed with us; the other half use the blueprint internally or with another vendor. We’re fine with either outcome.
The Sprint is a fit for ops leaders who already have one specific workflow in mind, can name the owner and the time-on-task, and want a defensible dollar figure before committing to a build. It’s not a fit if you’re at the explore-AI-in-general stage — start with the AI Ops Audit instead.
Section 03
Membership — Tier 1 vs Tier 2 differences.
Seven questions about engagement cadence, deliverables, and the decision rule between our two tiers.
Tier 1 ships one high-leverage AI workflow into your stack in 2–3 weeks. Tier 2 ships a full AI layer — multiple workflows, a custom GPT trained on your data, deep integrations, and team handoff — in 4–6 weeks. Tier 1 is the lower-risk proof-of-concept. Tier 2 is for teams that already know they want ROI in the first 90 days.
AI readiness assessment of your current stack; one automated workflow (built and integrated); connection to your existing tools (CRM, Slack, etc.); full documentation and runbook; and one round of post-launch tweaks. Tier 1 details →
Up to 5 automated workflows; a custom GPT trained on your data and processes; deep integrations (CRM, ERP, communication tools); team training sessions and written runbooks; and two rounds of post-launch iteration. Tier 2 details →
Tier 1 ships in 2–3 weeks from kickoff. Tier 2 ships in 4–6 weeks from kickoff. Both timelines are scoped up-front on a written brief that you sign off on before build starts.
Pick Tier 1 if you have one clear ops pain point and no internal AI expertise — it’s a low-risk proof of concept for a first-time buyer. Pick Tier 2 if you’re a mid-market ops team with a real bottleneck (support, RevOps, finance, post-M&A) and you want ROI in the first 90 days. If you’re not sure, book the AI Ops Audit and we’ll tell you.
Yes. If your Tier 1 engagement reveals more scope than the first workflow covered, we can pause, write a Tier 2 brief, and credit the Tier 1 fee toward it. We’ve never pressured a client into a Tier 2 they didn’t ask for — but we’ve also never said no when the work called for it.
You do. Full IP transfer on completion — workflows, models, integrations, documentation, runbooks. No licensing dependencies on Clearfield, no vendor lock-in. You can run it internally, modify it, or hand it to another vendor.
Ready to scope?
Book the free 30-min AI Ops Audit.
Bring one workflow you’d automate first. We’ll tell you whether Tier 1, Tier 2, the Discovery Sprint, or none of the above is the right next move — and give you the written 1-pager after.