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Training Track: Before You Invest in AI

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COURSE DESCRIPTION

Many SMEs want to use AI before their basic systems are in place. Orders are still retyped from emails, the customer list exists in several versions, last year's figures are hard to find. In that situation, an AI project costs money and returns little, whatever the tool.

This one-day session helps you check whether your company is ready, and what to do first if it is not. You place your company on a five-level maturity scale with yes/no criteria. You then test one of your own processes: is it stable enough to automate, is it a real bottleneck, and would removing it increase your volume? From the answers, you identify the two or three things to put in place, in order, and what to postpone.

The session does not teach you to build AI. It helps you decide what to build first.

COURSE CONTENT

1

Where you stand. The AI-Ready or Not scale: five levels, yes/no criteria, from paper to AI-ready.

2

What AI needs. What a working system requires from your company: accessible data, a stable process, a responsible person.

3

Automate and scale. Three questions on one of your processes, four possible outcomes.

4

The shortest path. What to build, in what order, and what to skip.

5

What to postpone. What not to buy until the groundwork is done.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
  • Assess your company's digital maturity against yes/no criteria
  •  Understand what an AI system requires from a company before it can produce results
  •  Apply the automate-and-scale test to one of your own processes
  • Recognise which offers are premature at your level
  • Sequence the steps to AI-readiness and compare them with what you were about to spend
PRACTICAL WORK
  • Self-assess against the five-level scale, evidence in hand
  •  Run one of your own processes through the automate-and-scale matrix, and cost it
  • Build your sequence: three steps, in order
DELIVERABLES
  • Your maturity level, with the gaps named
  • Your outcome on the automate-and-scale test: automate, stabilise first, or do not buy
  •  Your three steps, in order, with what each one enables and its order of magnitude
  •  Your list of what to postpone until the groundwork is done
TARGET AUDIENCE

Brussels SMEs and mid-caps considering AI, or under pressure to consider it: founders, managing directors, operations leads, and whoever holds the budget.

No technical knowledge required. This session is for the people who make the spending decision.

PREREQUISITE

None. Come with one process you would like to automate and, if you have one, the last digital or AI proposal you received.

TRAINER

Yavuz Sarikaya is Programme Manager & Advisor in Digital Transformation at the Research Department of the Université libre de Bruxelles, where he designed the sustAIn.brussels Training Tracks. He designs and deploys AI systems and advises companies on digital transformation projects, their funding and their governance.

PRICE

Thanks to the support of the European Commission and Innoviris in the framework of the EDIH sustAIn.brussels, SMEs and mid-caps receive this training free of charge (0€), in the context of de minimis aid. Large companies and participants without a company pay 560€ per participant.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Language: English (bilingual exchanges FR/EN welcome)

Location: BeCentral, Cantersteen 12, 1000 Brussels

Format: In person, interactive, hands-on

Participants: Max 15 participants

Duration: 7 hours (1 day, 09:00–17:00)

Date: Thursday 12 November 2026

Questions

Yavuz Sarikaya, Programme Manager @ULB

yavuz.sarikaya@ulb.be