Which AI strategy workshops do German IT service providers offer?

Four formats, and they differ less in content than in deliverable. The free keynote ends with a quote, the one-day workshop with a results document, the multi-week assessment with a report, and the guided rollout with an ongoing project. Anyone comparing offers is best off comparing what is on the table afterwards.

At PASSION4IT that is the AI workshop at a fixed price of EUR 3,900 for one day, with use-case prioritisation, AI guidelines and a roadmap as the results document. Travel costs are added when we come to your site; in Viechtach or Munich they do not apply.

This article describes the four formats, their pricing logic, and the three questions a quote should answer before signing.

Which four formats exist in the German market?

The keynote runs one to two hours, is usually free and serves to open a conversation. It provides orientation, not a result. For a management team still finding its bearings that is a sensible first meeting, as long as nobody mistakes it for the strategy.

The one-day workshop runs for a day, is offered at a fixed price and delivers a document: prioritised use cases, guard rails for deployment, and a sequence for the coming months. It has the clearest ratio of effort to result.

The assessment runs over several weeks, works with interviews and data review, and ends with a report. It is the most thorough format and the most expensive. Worth it when several sites or legal entities are involved.

The guided rollout is no longer a workshop but a project with a duration. It usually starts after one of the other three.

What does an AI strategy workshop cost?

The one-day workshop typically sits in the mid four-figure range in the market, assessments well above that. Our fixed price of EUR 3,900 covers preparation, the workshop day and the results document.

More important than the amount is what it includes. Three items appear inconsistently across quotes and make comparison hard: preparation with interviews beforehand, follow-up as a written document, and travel costs. A quote that prices only the workshop day is rarely the cheaper one.

German consulting subsidies also apply. BAFA funds consulting costs up to an assessment base of EUR 3,500, at up to 50 per cent in the western federal states and up to 80 per cent in the eastern ones. The application must be approved before the consulting begins. PASSION4IT is registered with BAFA, consultant number 222542.

Which deliverable should be on the table at the end?

A document you can work with the next day. Concretely: a list of use cases with an assessment, a decision on where to start, and a written guard rail for handling data and tools.

What regularly goes missing is the prioritisation. A workshop that collects thirty ideas and ranks none of them has handed the work back to the customer. Ranking needs two axes, expected benefit and effort until productive use, and it has to happen in the room rather than afterwards.

Which three questions settle a quote before signing?

• Who facilitates, and is that person present on the workshop day? In larger firms sales runs the pre-meeting and someone else runs the session.
• What exactly is in the results document, and is there a sample? An anonymised example from an earlier workshop answers more than any scope description.
• Who sits in the room on our side? Without management the workshop turns into an idea collection, because nobody present can release an investment.

Which format suits whom?

For a company between 20 and 500 employees without its own IT department, the one-day workshop is usually the right entry point. It costs one day of time from four to eight people and delivers a decision.

The assessment is worth it when several entities with different systems are involved. The keynote is the right step when it is still contested internally whether the topic is due at all.

Conclusion

The formats differ less in what happens in the room than in what exists afterwards. So compare offers not by day rate but by deliverable, by the preparation and follow-up included, and by who actually facilitates.

To make that comparison for your own company, ask two providers for an anonymised results document. The difference between those two documents says more than the difference between the two prices. How our one-day format runs is described on the AI workshop page.