AI CENTER OF EXCELLENCE
Your CoE is being run the same way the data office was run in 2014.
The Chief Data Officer role emerged in 2012. By 2015, every large enterprise had a CDO and a data strategy. By 2018, half of them had been quietly reorganized because the outputs never connected to the P&L. The AI CoE is on the same trajectory unless you give it the instruments a CFO would expect.
THE PROBLEM
Three things your CoE cannot do today.
Cannot capture
AI spend hides in 14 different budget lines: cloud infrastructure, vendor contracts, internal headcount, model API costs. You know you're spending. Your CFO doesn't know where, and neither do you with confidence.
Cannot evidence
Use cases funded on enthusiasm, killed on suspicion. When the board asks which AI investments delivered, you cannot show the numbers. The cases that worked got no credit. The ones that failed got no post-mortem.
Cannot defend
The board asks how the AI portfolio performed. You build the deck in a weekend. Every quarter. No audit trail, no re-pricing, no defensible methodology. Just slides assembled from memory and optimism.
THE ENGAGEMENT
Day 90: your CoE has instruments a CFO would recognize.
A governed portfolio
Every active and pipeline use case captured, scored on value and feasibility, priced with finance-grade P&L. No more spreadsheets. No more Notion boards. A single system of record your CFO can audit.
Decision audit trail
Every funding decision logged with rationale, scores, and financial projections at the time of decision. When a use case is killed, the record shows why. When one succeeds, the investment case is there to reference.
Board-ready artifact
A quarterly portfolio output that a non-technical board can read: which bets we placed, what they cost, what they returned, and what we're recommending next. Produced by the platform, not assembled by your team.
Running cadence
Quarterly OODA loop established: re-price the portfolio, reconcile plan vs. actual, update feasibility scores, produce the next board artifact. The CoE has a rhythm that survives personnel changes.
FOR AI LEADS
Vane Loop is not a tool you configure, it is a framework you run.
The difference between a governance tool and actual governance is who owns the framework. Most CoEs buy a tool. Nobody owns the framework. The tool sits idle.
The 90-day pilot is structured so that by day 90, your team owns the framework: the scoring methodology, the financial model, the board artifact cadence. The founders are at kickoff and wrap-up. SPG handles delivery. You drive it after.
- Fixed-fee 90-day pilot with no per-seat pricing, no tier selection
- Founders embedded at kickoff and wrap-up
- Your team owns the framework and IP at close
- Quarterly cadence running before day 90 ends
BOOK A PILOT
Every engagement starts with a 90-day fixed-fee pilot.
No per-seat pricing. No tier selection. One pilot with a named deliverable: a governed AI portfolio your CFO can read and your board can act on.