AI TRAINING
AI for SME Exit Readiness and Due Diligence
Prepare your AI assets, governance records, and data room for a credible, buyer-ready transaction.
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Run the diagnostic →What it covers
This workshop equips SME owners and their advisors to document AI use cases, clarify intellectual property ownership, and build a governance-ready risk register before entering a sale or investment process. Participants learn how to structure AI-related disclosures in a data room, identify red flags that buyers and investors typically raise, and produce plain-language governance artefacts that increase buyer confidence. The format combines short facilitated sessions with hands-on document drafting, so owners leave with usable outputs rather than slides.
What you'll be able to do
- Produce a structured inventory of all AI tools and use cases used in the business, suitable for inclusion in a data room
- Identify and document IP ownership for AI-generated outputs and any proprietary training data
- Draft a one-page AI risk register that addresses the due diligence questions most commonly raised by acquirers and investors
- Organise AI-related disclosures within a data room using a standard folder structure and summary memo
- Recognise GDPR-related data-processing risks that could delay or derail a transaction and outline remediation steps
Topics covered
- Mapping and documenting current AI tools and use cases
- IP ownership: who owns model outputs, training data, and fine-tuned models
- Building a buyer-facing AI risk register
- Data room structure for AI disclosures
- GDPR and data-processing obligations relevant to a transaction
- Identifying governance gaps that reduce valuation
- Producing plain-language AI governance artefacts
- Red flags investors and acquirers commonly cite about SME AI use
Delivery
Delivered as a one-day in-person or virtual workshop (6-8 hours core, optional 2-hour follow-up session). Participants receive fillable templates for the AI asset inventory, risk register, and data-room disclosure memo. The session is approximately 40% facilitated instruction and 60% guided document drafting using the participants' own business context. A small cohort (2-10 people) is strongly recommended to allow personalised feedback. Remote delivery requires participants to share screen access to their existing tool stack for the mapping exercise.
What makes it work
- Completing the AI asset inventory before the workshop so facilitated time is spent on analysis and drafting, not discovery
- Involving the company's legal or M&A advisor in the workshop or in a post-session review to align governance artefacts with transaction documentation
- Using the risk register as a living document updated at each transaction milestone rather than a one-off exercise
- Getting explicit written confirmation of IP and data terms from key AI vendors before the data room opens
Common mistakes
- Treating AI tools as invisible infrastructure and omitting them from the data room entirely, which surfaces as a red flag during buyer discovery
- Assuming that because an AI tool is a third-party SaaS subscription, IP and data-processing liability automatically sit with the vendor
- Waiting until the transaction process has started to document AI governance, leaving no time to remediate gaps
- Conflating 'we use AI' marketing language with the structured evidence buyers and investors actually require
When NOT to take this
This workshop is not the right fit when a company has no active AI tool usage whatsoever, in that case, a general AI literacy programme should come first, and exit-readiness planning should be revisited once at least a handful of tools are in regular use.
Providers to consider
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