Getting Your Data Ready for AI: A Simple Checklist

You do not need perfect data to start, but you do need to know what you have. Four checks cover most of the risk.

The checklist

• Know where it lives: list the systems and folders the AI will read.
• Remove duplicates and old versions so it does not quote the wrong one.
• Mark what is current and what is authoritative.
• Set access rules so people only see what they should.

Start narrow

Pick one set of documents or one table for the pilot instead of cleaning everything. Cleaning one area well proves the value and shows what the rest needs.

Often the tidy-up is as useful to the business as the AI itself.