Sensing
What can the company perceive? Capture incoming work, changes and exceptions close to where they happen. The company needs to notice before it can act.
The method
The Business Nervous System.
The connected machinery through which your company notices what is happening, understands it, decides what should happen and acts.
Underneath Company-Level AI
Give the company a way to use what it knows.
A customer request means more when it arrives with the relevant history, a clear owner and the authority to take the next step. Your company’s software and people need to work together for that to happen.
The Business Nervous System is the architecture behind that capability. It connects people, software, data, automation and AI around the work itself.
In a one-person company, it can carry context that otherwise lives only with you. In a larger business, it helps that context travel across the people responsible for the work.
The functional model
Five things the company must be able to do.
A workflow can involve all five. The read examines each function and records the evidence behind its rating.
Signaling
Where can information travel? Get the request and its context to the system or person that needs them. A handoff should carry enough information to begin.
Processing
What can machines now understand? Interpret requests, retrieve relevant company knowledge and prepare useful context. Clear rules handle predictable work; AI can help with information that needs interpretation.
Deciding
Which judgments can machines support or make? Define who has authority. Routine decisions can follow agreed rules, while consequential or unfamiliar cases reach a person with the context to decide.
Regulating
How does the company learn and retain control? Check the outcome, review exceptions and update what the business knows. People retain authority over the system and changes to its scope.
The implementation
Six layers working together.
Systems of record
The software that knows its part.
Business memory
A shared picture of the operating work.
Integration
Information moves between systems.
Processing
Events become useful context.
Interface
Each person can see and do their part.
Control
Failures and unfinished work become visible.
Domain software keeps its authority: accounting for financial records, a CRM for customer activity, specialized tools for specialized work. Shared business memory connects relevant facts, decisions and relationships.
Integration moves information. Processing makes it useful. Interfaces put the work in reach, and control checks whether the intended result occurred. AI becomes part of this architecture where its contribution can be tested.
The read
Evidence beside every rating.
| Rating | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Functional | Working reliably in the work examined. |
| Degraded | Partial, inconsistent or too dependent on workarounds. |
| Absent | The function is missing from the operating structure or carried by a person without a defined system around it. |
The rating locates a constraint. The explanation connects it to a business consequence, a human decision or a change worth investigating. The AI Gap map then shows what current capabilities could make possible.
Explore the readControl and ownership
The company keeps authority.
A system needs a defined purpose, permitted information and a boundary around what it can do. Important actions have an owner. Missing context, failures and uncertain cases have a visible route to a person.
The design also checks completion. A successful automation run does not establish that the customer received the right answer or the job reached billing. The business outcome needs its own evidence.
Inspect the architecture standardStart with the real work
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