A lot of people hesitate before booking an AI scoping call because they are not sure what they are walking into. Will it be 30 minutes of a sales rep reading from a deck? Will they push for a proposal before you are ready? Will it be useful if you have not figured out your requirements yet?
Here is an honest account of what happens on a MetaSys scoping call: what we ask, what you should prepare, and what you walk away with. If that sounds useful, the calendar is at the bottom. If it does not sound like the right moment yet, the rest of this article will help you figure out when it is.
Who Is on the Call
On our end, a scoping call involves an AI architect, not a sales representative. The person you talk to has built production AI systems. They know what breaks, what takes longer than expected, and what questions reveal whether a project is well-defined or not. If a technical question comes up that requires a specialist, we bring one in on a follow-up call. We do not bring a closer.
On your end, the call is most useful when the person with the clearest view of the problem is present. That might be a VP of Operations, a CTO, a product manager, or a founder. The title does not matter. What matters is that the person on the call understands the business problem, has a sense of what the data environment looks like, and has some authority over the decision to proceed.
What We Cover in 30 Minutes
The first ten minutes are on the problem. We ask you to describe the process or decision you want AI to improve. Not in technical terms, just in operational terms: what is happening today, who does it, how often, what it costs in time or money, and what a better outcome would look like. We will ask follow-up questions to understand where human judgment is currently applied and where the data comes from.
The middle ten minutes are on feasibility and fit. Based on what you described, we share an honest read on whether AI is the right tool for this problem, what the likely architecture would look like, what the main unknowns are, and what the typical timeline and investment range looks like for a project of that type. We do not give exact numbers on a first call because we have not seen your data or your systems yet. We give ranges and explain what pushes the number up or down.
The final ten minutes are on next steps. If the problem is a good fit and the timing is right, we walk through what a structured engagement would look like and what information we would need to produce a specific proposal. If you are not ready to move yet, we suggest what to figure out first and offer to reconnect when you are. There is no pressure to commit on the call.
What to Prepare
You do not need a polished requirements document. The scoping call is designed to help you develop clarity, not assume it. But the more specific you can be about the problem, the more useful the call will be.
- A description of the specific process or decision you want to improve
- A rough sense of how often it happens and what it currently costs
- What data exists and where it lives (even a rough description is useful)
- What a successful outcome would look like in measurable terms
- Any constraints: compliance requirements, integration requirements, timeline pressure
If you have relevant documentation (a process diagram, a sample data extract, a vendor proposal you are evaluating), you are welcome to share it before the call. We will read it. If you do not have anything like that, come anyway. The conversation works without it.
Our AI readiness assessment is a structured alternative for teams that want a systematic picture of their readiness before a scoping call. It covers data, process, team, and technology dimensions and produces a prioritized use case list. Some teams do the assessment first and bring the output to the scoping call. Both sequences work.
What You Walk Away With
After the call, you will have a written summary of what we discussed, including the problem as we understood it, the feasibility read, the main architecture considerations, the likely timeline and investment range, and the next steps we agreed on. That summary is yours to use internally, share with your leadership, or use to evaluate other vendors.
If we agreed that a formal proposal makes sense, we will have that to you within 48 hours of the call. The proposal covers scope, architecture approach, timeline, fixed-price investment, and what happens if scope needs to change.
If the call revealed that you are not ready yet, the summary will say what specific things would make a follow-up call more productive. There is no value in producing a proposal for a project that has not been defined enough to scope accurately.
Why It Is Not a Sales Pitch
We have an obvious commercial interest in the call leading to an engagement. That does not make it a sales pitch. It makes it a conversation where our interest and your interest align: you need to know whether your problem is solvable with AI and what it would cost, and we need to know whether the problem is one we can solve well and price honestly.
If the problem is not a fit for what we build, we say so. If the timeline is not right, we say that too. Sending a proposal to a company that is not ready produces a failed engagement later, which is worse for us than a no today. The call is genuinely exploratory.
For more on how we structure our work and what our engagements look like in practice, see how we work. When you are ready, book a scoping call and pick a time that works. Thirty minutes. No deck. Just a direct conversation.
