AI Strategy and Capital Allocation
Where the AI dollars go, what each move is worth, and how to defend it to the board.
A custom engagement for executives deciding where to put AI investment dollars over the next 12 to 18 months. The work covers portfolio strategy, capital allocation across initiatives, financial governance, board-level reporting design, and the build-versus-buy and vendor decisions that follow. The output reads like a board memo with a P&L attached, not a tools roadmap.
Where should our AI dollars go over the next 12 to 18 months, what is each move worth, who owns the spend, and what does the board need to see at each review? Tools and vendors are downstream of these questions; this engagement answers the upstream ones first.
| Week 1 | Current state. Portfolio of active AI initiatives scored on payback, viability with current tools, and the dollar baseline each is supposed to move. Spend mapped to outcomes, including the spend that is not being mapped today. |
| Week 2 | Capital plan. Sequenced allocation across initiatives for the next 12 to 18 months. Build-versus-buy called for each, with vendor recommendations. Includes the initiatives to kill and the initiatives to leave alone. |
| Week 3 | Governance and reporting. The one-page board view, the standing operating review format, the decision rights that have to change, and the early-warning indicators that say the plan is working or it is not. |
| Week 4 | Working session and readout. Stress-test with finance, operating, and technology leadership. Lock the priorities, approve the capital plan, and ratify the board materials. |
- The current AI portfolio: every initiative, pilot, and active vendor contract.
- Twelve months of board materials referencing AI.
- Annualized AI spend by category, with whatever attribution to outcomes exists.
- Access to the three to five people who run the AI program day to day, plus the CFO or finance lead who is accountable for the spend.
- The 12-month plan or budget the AI line item is rolling up to.
- The dollar baseline (or lack of one) currently captured against each initiative.
Representative deliverables from a recent engagement:
1. The portfolio scorecard. Every active AI initiative on one page. Payback, viability, execution distance, recommended action: kill, ship, scale, defer. The number of items in each column is the most informative part.
2. The capital plan. Sequenced 12 to 18 month allocation of AI investment dollars across initiatives, with build-versus-buy and vendor recommendations. Designed to be entered into the operating budget without modification.
3. The board page. Three exposures on one page: operating, competitive, attestation. Each has a status, an owner, and the one question the board should ask this quarter. Replaces the existing 30-slide AI section in most board packs.
4. The governance memo. Who decides what, on what cadence, with what evidence. Most AI programs run without one; this is the cleanest single intervention available.
5. The follow-on engagement scope. If the work indicates a full implementation engagement, the scope, budget, and timing recommendation are written into the memo. You decide whether to engage.
If you have not yet bought AI tools or run a pilot, the Operating Teardown: AI Edition is the better starting point. If the issue is whether to invest in AI at all, that is a Growth Strategy or Board Readiness conversation. If the executive has already decided which pilots to kill but the organization is not letting them, that is Executive Advisory work, not analysis.
“We had fourteen AI pilots, no shared definition of which ones mattered, and a board asking for a number. The engagement gave us the kill list, the capital plan, and the board page we did not know we needed. The CFO has used the same page for three quarters running.”
CIO, Mid-market insurance, $1.2B revenue
Illustrative. Composite of recent mid-market engagements, not a single named client.
RLK Consulting is Ryan King, sole founder. He spent nearly 15 years at McKinsey and Deloitte advising Fortune 50 clients, and now runs a strategy practice in Richmond, Virginia serving the mid-market. The person you pay is the person who does the work.
To begin
A 30-minute scoping call. We talk through where the AI dollars sit and what the right next move is.