Frequently Asked Questions

01 is an enterprise AI consulting firm that helps organisations adopt AI from any starting point. We build AI systems that you own and control, designed to avoid vendor lock-in and to keep your data in an environment you control.

Our consultants and experts bring many years of enterprise experience, and the firm was built AI-native from scratch. Unlike established consultancies retrofitting AI into old processes, we have no legacy systems, outdated playbooks, or organisational resistance. We combine deep AI expertise with enterprise reality: legacy systems, compliance requirements, and the human side of technology adoption. We also bring AI risk intelligence from having seen failures first-hand: AI-generated reports with invented figures, biased systems, and vendor dependencies.

The "01 Philosophy" is "Zero to One": we meet you where you are and work with you towards where you need to be. Every enterprise's AI journey is different, and we help you move towards "1" (full AI maturity) from any starting point, whether you're at 0.0 (discovery) or 0.8 (ready to deploy).

We serve enterprises across multiple industries. Our AI Use Cases library covers more than 90 enterprise AI problems across industries, teams and capabilities, from finance and healthcare to manufacturing, retail, professional services and beyond.

We offer six core services: AI Audit & Risk Assessment, Strategic AI Roadmap, Proprietary AI Development, Infrastructure & MLOps, Team Enablement, and Governance & Compliance. Each can be delivered on its own or combined, tailored to your organisation.

The AI Audit & Risk Assessment evaluates your organisation's current AI maturity, data infrastructure, and operational readiness. It includes: current state assessment across technology, data, and talent; data readiness and quality evaluation; risk identification covering security, bias, compliance, and operational concerns; a shadow AI inventory of the tools in use and the data they handle; a security review of AI agents and assistants; opportunity mapping aligned to business objectives; and a prioritised action plan with clear milestones.

The Strategic AI Roadmap service produces a custom roadmap aligning AI initiatives with your actual business goals. This includes executive alignment workshops, use case identification and prioritisation, phased implementation balancing quick wins with strategic bets, resource and budget planning, AI spend and value tracking so each use case is scaled or stopped on measured results, success metrics and KPIs tied to business outcomes, and ongoing roadmap refinement.

Proprietary AI Development is the design and build of custom AI systems tailored to your data, workflows, and business requirements, covering machine learning, NLP, computer vision, and generative AI, including AI agents with scoped permissions and retrieval systems that cite their sources. You retain ownership and control, and the systems are designed to avoid lock-in to a single vendor or third-party platform.

Infrastructure & MLOps covers the build and management of production-grade AI infrastructure, including cloud and hybrid infrastructure design, EU-hosted and self-hosted model platforms, an LLM gateway for spend metering and model fallback, evaluation and monitoring of LLM applications, CI/CD pipelines for model deployment, real-time monitoring and performance tracking, automated alerting and incident response, model versioning and rollback, cost optimisation, and security hardening.

Team Enablement is a programme that develops the skills and culture your organisation needs to work well with AI. Programmes include executive AI literacy, technical training for data scientists and engineers, hands-on workshops using your actual data, role-specific training for product managers and analysts, change management support, and internal AI champion development.

Governance & Compliance establishes frameworks for responsible AI covering ethics, bias, transparency, privacy, and regulatory compliance, including the EU AI Act, GDPR, DORA, NIS2, CCPA, HIPAA, and industry-specific regulations, AI management systems aligned with ISO/IEC 42001, plus documentation, audit trail systems, and ongoing regulatory monitoring.

Audits and advisory programmes, with human analysis, workshops and structured deliverables, start from €4,900. Larger transformation programmes are scoped individually. If you want a first read before talking to us, the Automated AI Diagnostic, a self-serve pre-check on the AI tools your organisation uses and the exposures that deserve attention first, is available online for a fixed price of €490 excl. VAT. It is broad rather than deep: it shows you where to look. Contact us to discuss what is right for your organisation.

Yes, we offer an initial discovery call at no cost to understand your situation, discuss your goals, and determine how we can best help. This helps both parties assess fit before any commitment.

Our free assessment tools are the quickest start. The Automated AI Diagnostic is available online for a fixed price of €490 excl. VAT: you answer an online questionnaire and receive a report and an executive deck on the AI tools your organisation uses and the exposures that deserve attention first, with no sales call required. For a more hands-on engagement with human analysis and workshops, our audit programmes start from €4,900.

We offer both, depending on what works best for your situation. Well-defined projects like audits or roadmap development often work well as fixed-price engagements. Ongoing development, enablement, or advisory work may be better suited to time-based arrangements.

Yes. Many clients begin with a focused assessment or pilot project, then expand as they see results. Our staged approach (0.0 to 1.0) is designed for this, so you can progress at your own pace.

No. We believe in earning your continued partnership through results. Engagements can be project-based, and you're always free to decide next steps as you go.

Security is part of every engagement. We help organisations identify and reduce AI risks before they become problems: unauthorised AI use (shadow AI), data exposure through third-party tools, and the newer risks that come with AI agents, such as prompt injection, over-broad permissions and long-lived credentials. That means risk assessment, secure architecture design with least-privilege access and human approval for consequential actions, and governance put in place from the start.

Shadow AI is the use of AI tools by employees without IT or security oversight, such as staff using ChatGPT, Copilot, or other public AI services for work tasks. Sensitive company data, customer information, trade secrets, and proprietary knowledge can be shared with external providers without anyone noticing, and you may lose control over how that data is stored or used, depending on the provider's terms.

We start by finding where your data goes today: which AI tools staff use, on which plans, and what each vendor's terms allow on training and retention. Then, use case by use case, we choose between an enterprise plan with zero-retention terms, a European provider, or models hosted on your own infrastructure or a private EU cloud, weighing cost against control. The choice is backed by an approved tool list, data loss prevention controls and clear guidance for staff.

We design security-first architectures that keep your data in an environment you control. This includes on-premise or private cloud deployment, encryption at rest and in transit, strict access controls, audit trails, and design choices that take account of your industry's regulatory requirements. You own the AI systems we build, and they are designed so that your data is not shared with external providers.

Yes. As part of our Governance & Compliance service, we help organisations develop AI usage policies that define approved tools, data handling rules, and consequences for policy violations, plus employee training so that people understand the risks and follow safe practices.

Our Governance & Compliance service includes bias detection and mitigation protocols, transparency and explainability standards, and ethical AI frameworks tailored to your industry, to reduce reputational and legal risk.

We support the EU AI Act, GDPR, DORA, NIS2 and sector rules such as MiFID II and the Medical Device Regulation, along with management-system standards such as ISO/IEC 42001 and ISO/IEC 27001. For organisations with US operations we also cover CCPA and HIPAA. Our governance frameworks include documentation and audit trail systems, risk management processes, and ongoing regulatory monitoring.

The AI journey has six stages: 0.0 Discovery (starting from zero), 0.2 Strategy (already exploring AI), 0.4 Foundation (pilots running), 0.6 Build (systems in development), 0.8 Deploy (ready to launch), and 1.0 Scale (live and optimising performance).

Yes. Whether you're starting from scratch at 0.0 or accelerating from 0.6, we work with you towards full AI maturity. Our approach is designed to meet you where you are.

The Discovery stage (0.0) is where we audit your landscape, assess risks, and build your foundation. It suits organisations just beginning to explore AI: we map opportunities and set out a clear path forward.

If your AI systems are already live, the Scale stage (1.0) focuses on optimising performance and embedding AI-first thinking across your organisation, so that you get more value from existing AI investments.

We provide five free interactive tools: the Quick AI Risk Check, a short screen of common AI exposure patterns; the Quick AI Readiness Snapshot, to gauge adoption readiness; the ROI Calculator, for an illustrative estimate of return on investment; the AI Adoption Quiz, to test your knowledge of enterprise AI adoption challenges; and the AI Philosophy Check, to compare your approach with the one we recommend. We also keep a short guide to independent leaderboards for comparing AI models.

The Quick AI Risk Check is a short screen of the most common AI exposure patterns, from shadow AI to compliance concerns, with pointers based on your answers. A fuller assessment is free with an account.

The Quick AI Readiness Snapshot looks at your readiness for AI adoption across five dimensions: strategy, data, technology, people, and governance.

The ROI Calculator gives an illustrative estimate of the return on an AI initiative, based on the assumptions you enter, to help you compare options. It is not financial advice.

Our guide to comparing AI models lists six independent leaderboards, among them Stanford HELM, SWE-bench from Princeton and the Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard, with what each one measures and the limits that apply to all of them. We link to them rather than republish their results.

You can start with our free assessment tools to understand your current position, or contact us directly through our contact page. We'll help determine the best starting point for your AI journey.

No. We work with organisations at every stage, from those with no AI experience to those with mature systems looking to optimise. Our Discovery stage (0.0) is designed for organisations starting from scratch.

We build AI systems that you own, with full documentation, knowledge transfer, and architectures designed for independence, so that you do not depend on us or on a single third-party platform to operate them.

We primarily work remotely, which allows us to serve clients anywhere in the world efficiently. We can arrange on-site visits for workshops, key milestones, or situations where in-person collaboration adds significant value.

01 primarily serves enterprises in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and across Europe, where we provide our full range of AI consulting services on-site and remotely. For organisations outside Europe, we offer remote-first engagements with a reduced scope, covering advisory, strategy, and selected development work. Contact us to discuss what is possible for your region.