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Where Do You Stand?

AI Maturity Compass

MIT CISR-based assessment across 7 AI capability areas

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Features List

7

Capability Areas

4

Maturity Stages

30 Min

To Complete

Why Finance Leaders Use This Assessment

Know Your Starting Point

Most finance leaders have a feeling about where their AI program stands. This assessment replaces the feeling with a score. Answer questions across 7 capability areas and get a maturity stage — Stage 1 through 4 — backed by the same research framework MIT CISR used across 721 companies. You get a number, not an opinion.

Benchmarked Against Real Data

The MIT CISR research found that Stage 3 enterprises outperform their industry peers by 11.3 percentage points on growth and 8.7 points on profit. Stage 1 enterprises trail by 12.6 and 9.6 points. Your score tells you which side of that divide you're on — and how far you need to travel to cross it.

7 Areas, No Blind Spots

A single AI score hides more than it reveals. This assessment scores separately across AI Strategy and Governance, Data Management, Skills and Culture, Use Cases, Technologies and Tools, Process Transformation, and Business Model Innovation. You see exactly which capability is pulling your score down.

Results in Under 30 Minutes

The questionnaire uses a straightforward 1-to-5 dropdown scale for each question. No complex inputs, no consultant required. Complete the assessment sheet, go to Detailed Results, and your scores, stage, and capability breakdown are already calculated. You can run it again after six months to track progress.

Stage Descriptions Tell You What's Next

The Model Reference tab explains exactly what each stage requires, what finance leaders in that stage are focused on, and what financial performance looks like at each level. It's not just a score — it's a map from where you are to where you need to go.

What You Get

  • Introduction

    Overview of the MIT CISR Enterprise AI Maturity Model, step-by-step instructions for completing the assessment, the 5-point rating scale with definitions, and the full maturity stage reference table showing stage names, enterprise prevalence, and financial performance benchmarks.

  • AI Maturity Assessment Questionnaire

    The full assessment questionnaire organized across 7 capability areas. Each question uses a 1-to-5 dropdown (1 = Not started, 5 = Optimized/Integrated). Includes a Notes column for team observations. Complete all questions to trigger automatic scoring in the Results tab.

  • Detailed Results

    Auto-calculated scores by capability area with maturity stage assigned to each. Shows your overall composite score, overall maturity stage, and a breakdown across all 7 areas — so you see where you're strong and where you're behind. Strengths and Areas for Improvement columns for team annotation.

  • Model Reference

    Full MIT CISR stage descriptions for all four stages, including the specific activities and focus areas that define each stage, and the financial performance impact at each level — from Stage 1 (Growth: -12.6 pp, Profit: -9.6 pp) through Stage 4 (Growth: +17.1 pp, Profit: +10.4 pp).

  • MIT CISR 4-Stage Maturity Framework

    The underlying research model: Stage 1 Experiment and Prepare (28% of enterprises), Stage 2 Build Pilots and Capabilities (34%), Stage 3 Develop AI Ways of Working (31%), and Stage 4 Become AI Future Ready (7%). Based on a 2022 survey of 721 companies by MIT Center for Information Systems Research.

  • Third-Party Comfort Index (TCI)

    A vendor scoring formula (Documentation, Transparency, Regulatory Alignment) with Buy/Hold/No-Buy thresholds for approving third-party AI tools.

  • 7 Capability Area Scores

    Individual scores for AI Strategy and Governance, Data Management and Infrastructure, AI Skills and Culture, AI Use Cases and Implementation, AI Technologies and Tools, Process Transformation, and Business Model Innovation. Each area scores independently so you can prioritize improvement efforts by area.

  • 5-Level Rating Scale

    Standardized scoring definitions: 1 (Not started, 0%), 2 (Initial/Ad hoc, 25%), 3 (Defined/Repeatable, 50%), 4 (Managed/Measured, 75%), 5 (Optimized/Integrated, 100%). The percentage conversion makes each rating directly interpretable as a maturity percentage per area.

When to Use This Workbook

Starting an AI program and need a baseline

Before your team does anything else with AI, you need to know where you're starting from. Complete the assessment across all 7 capability areas and get a documented Stage 1, 2, 3, or 4 classification. That baseline becomes the foundation for your AI roadmap, budget justification, and board presentation.

Preparing an AI strategy for the board

Your board is asking about the company's AI readiness. The maturity stage gives you a credible, research-backed answer — not a slide with buzzwords. The MIT CISR financial performance data (Stage 3 enterprises outperform by 11.3 percentage points on growth) gives the board a clear reason to invest in moving up the maturity curve.

Prioritizing AI investments across 7 areas

You have a limited AI budget and need to decide where to invest first. The capability-area breakdown shows exactly which of the 7 areas is dragging your overall score down. Instead of spreading budget thin, you put it where the maturity gap is largest and the performance impact is most direct.

Running a 6-month AI progress review

You completed the assessment six months ago and your team has been executing. Run it again, compare capability area scores to your baseline, and show the board a before-and-after maturity progression. The consistent 1-to-5 scale makes period-over-period comparison straightforward.

Benchmarking against industry AI maturity data

Sixty-two percent of enterprises are at Stage 1 or Stage 2 — below the performance inflection point. Only 7% have reached Stage 4. Your assessment score tells you where you stand in that distribution and how far you need to travel to reach the performance premium that Stage 3 and Stage 4 deliver.

The 4 AI Maturity Stages (MIT CISR Research)

Stage Name What You're Doing Growth vs. Industry Profit vs. Industry
Stage 1 Experiment and Prepare Educating the workforce, setting AI policies, making data accessible, identifying HITL oversight needs. Funding AI literacy for leadership. -12.6 pp -9.6 pp
Stage 2 Build Pilots and Capabilities Running AI pilots, tracking value created, storytelling about learnings. Consolidating data silos. Moving from experiments to systematic innovation. -3.5 pp -2.2 pp
Stage 3 Develop AI Ways of Working Expanding process automation, adopting test-and-learn methods, using pretrained models, exploring autonomous agents. Scaling AI across the enterprise. +11.3 pp +8.7 pp
Stage 4 Become AI Future Ready Embedding AI into all decisions and processes. Creating AI-augmented services. Combining traditional, generative, agentic, and robotic AI. +17.1 pp +10.4 pp

Common Questions

Find Out Where You Stand. Then Close the Gap.

MIT CISR-based AI maturity assessment across 7 capability areas. Results in 30 minutes. Updated for 2026.

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