AI Maturity Model
An AI Maturity Model places an organisation on a scale from ad hoc experiments to AI embedded in core decisions, so you can see honestly where you stand and what the next stage actually requires, instead of jumping straight to 'we need more AI'.
Rungs climb a ladder from scattered ad hoc experiments at the bottom to AI shaping day-to-day calls at the top.
Reach for this when…
- Every department has a different AI pilot running and nobody can say if any of them add up to a strategy.
- Leadership wants 'an AI strategy' before anyone has checked whether the data and skills exist to support one.
- You need a shared way to say 'we are earlier than the vendor pitch suggests' without it sounding like a no.
How to run it
- Define the maturity levels relevant to your sector: roughly ad hoc, piloting, scaling, and embedded.
- Assess honestly against each level: data readiness, skills, governance, and actual use in decisions.
- Identify the real level, not the level the last vendor demo implied.
- Set the specific gaps to close to reach the next level, not the top level.
- Reassess on a fixed cycle as capability and the technology both move.
A worked example
Situation. Yassine El Amrani ran data at a mid-sized insurer in Casablanca, Morocco, where three separate teams had each built their own AI-flavoured pilot and the board believed the company was 'well advanced'.
Applied. He ran the maturity assessment properly: strong pilots, but no shared data pipeline, no model governance, and no AI decision embedded in an actual claims or underwriting process. That put the company at 'piloting', not 'scaling'.
Result. The board redirected budget from a fourth pilot toward the shared data pipeline the honest assessment showed was actually missing. Six months later, one pilot became the first AI decision genuinely embedded in claims triage.
The catch
The levels invite organisations to grade themselves generously - self-assessment against your own aspiration is not the same as assessment against a working example elsewhere. It also treats maturity as one line, when data maturity, governance maturity and skills maturity can sit at different levels within the same company.
Three unconnected pilots are not a higher maturity level than one pilot - count integration, not activity.