NOVO Compass Explorer
Find the highest-leverage AI opportunities in your business — in days, not weeks.
Explorer is NOVO's discovery service. A purpose-built AI agent runs structured discovery conversations across your team in parallel; a senior NOVO advisor synthesizes the findings into a documented summary of how your business actually operates today and a prioritized backlog of AI opportunities ranked by leverage and feasibility. Real interview content. Grounded analysis. The work consultants charge for, faster and more thorough.
Have a quick question?
Why Explorer
Most AI strategy work ages out before anyone uses it.
You know the pattern. Six to eight weeks of consultants conducting sequential interviews. A team gets pulled away from their actual jobs to sit in conference rooms answering structured questions. Analysts go off and write things up. The deck lands in month three. By the time leadership reviews it, half the team's been reorganized, the budget's been redirected, and the recommended initiatives feel disconnected from the operational reality the team is actually living in.
Explorer is built differently. The structured interview work — the slow, expensive part — runs in parallel through NOVO's purpose-built AI agent. Conversations happen across your team simultaneously, not sequentially. A senior NOVO advisor focuses on what humans are actually best at: synthesis, judgment, and prioritization. The output is a prioritized backlog of AI opportunities, grounded in what your team actually said, delivered while it's still relevant.
How Explorer works
A four-phase engagement built around what AI is good at — and what humans are.
Explorer engagements run as project-based discovery work. Four phases. NOVO's AI agent and the senior NOVO advisor each have distinct roles — the AI scales the at-scale interview and analysis work; the advisor leads the engagement and brings the judgment that ranks opportunities, weighs feasibility, and translates findings into a backlog leadership can actually use.
Phase 1
Frame & scope
Engagement scoping with the senior NOVO advisor. Business context, strategic priorities, the target population for interviews, and the themes that matter most for your specific situation. This sets the parameters the AI agent will operate within — without it, the discovery work loses focus. With it, the engagement runs efficiently from day one.
Led by senior NOVO advisor
Phase 2
AI-led discovery
NOVO's AI agent runs structured discovery conversations across the target population in parallel. Each interview follows a consistent framework, adapts to the participant's role and context, and captures grounded operational detail. The work that took six weeks of consultant time happens in days — at higher coverage than sequential interviewing can achieve.
Run by NOVO's AI agent · senior advisor monitors quality
Phase 3
Synthesis & analysis
The senior NOVO advisor synthesizes the AI agent's interview corpus into two parallel outputs: a documented as-is process summary capturing how your business actually operates today, and the analysis that becomes the prioritized backlog. AI handles the at-scale text analysis work; the advisor brings business judgment, strategic context, and the prioritization decisions that turn raw findings into actionable opportunities.
Led by senior NOVO advisor · AI supports analysis
Phase 4
Deliverables presented
Final deliverables presented to your leadership: a documented as-is process summary and a prioritized backlog of AI opportunities, each scored on leverage and feasibility, with recommended sequencing. The backlog is structured to feed directly into Compass Achieve for execution — same vocabulary, same operational shape, same Sprint-ready format.
Led by senior NOVO advisor
The Explorer deliverables
Two outputs your leadership can use immediately.
Explorer engagements produce two deliverables, working together. Each addresses a different question: what is, and what could be.
01
As-is process summary
A documented picture of how your business actually operates today — captured through grounded interview content from across your team. Workflows, decision-making patterns, manual handoffs, operational pain points. Valuable independent of any AI work, because most leadership teams discover the as-is summary surfaces things they didn't fully have visibility into.
02
Prioritized backlog of AI opportunities
Each opportunity scored on leverage (impact on business outcomes) and feasibility (technical complexity, time, dependencies), with recommended sequencing. Structured to feed directly into Compass Achieve for execution.
Each backlog item includes
- Problem
- Grounded in interview content
- Approach
- Proposed AI / automation solution
- Leverage
- Scored impact on business outcomes
- Feasibility
- Scored complexity & dependencies
Neither deliverable is a deck. Both are working artifacts your team can use to ground decisions, prioritize work, and deliver.
Leads into Compass Achieve
The prioritized backlog Explorer produces is structured to feed directly into Compass Achieve — Sprint-based execution against the highest-leverage opportunities. Many customers run Explorer first, then move into Achieve to deliver the top backlog items. Same vocabulary. Same operational shape. The handoff is built into the deliverable.
Ready when you are
The fastest way to find out where AI fits is to look — properly.
Explorer consultations focus on your specific discovery situation. Tell us about your business — the priorities, the pressure points, the AI questions you can't quite answer yet — and we'll talk through whether Explorer is the right starting point and what an engagement would look like for your team.