Service Description

Effective: 3 October 2026

Last reviewed: 3 October 2026

This document is the Service Description for the Readiness Topic, and it forms part of the ApexIQ Companion Service Terms. Where it and those terms conflict about Readiness, this document governs. It describes the service precisely, including what it will not do. Where a statement here limits the service, that limit is part of the agreement.

1. What the service is

Readiness turns an accepted brief into the artefacts a team needs to prepare one customer demonstration or one proof of concept.

You choose one pack per request. The Demo Readiness Pack prepares a focused demonstration for a named audience and a named decision. The PoC Readiness Pack prepares a bounded evaluation with criteria, evidence, responsibilities, prerequisites, and decision conditions.

The service prepares the work. It does not run the demonstration, build or run the proof of concept, implement or configure anything, provision an environment, perform testing, negotiate with your customer, manage the evaluation while it runs, or declare production acceptance or a Technical Win.

2. Who it is for

The buying team is you: the organisation that commissions the pack. The customer is the organisation you are selling to and evaluating with. The 2 are kept distinct throughout, because the distinction governs what may appear in which file.

3. What comes back

3 files per pack.

An internal charter, written for your team, carrying the proposal and the reasoning behind it. A customer charter, written for you to share with your customer, carrying the proposal alone. A working workbook covering the criteria; the milestones; the register of prerequisites, risks, and dependencies; and the results and decision record.

Each pack also reports where the evaluation stands against 5 checkpoints: the question, the measures, the evidence, the people, and the start. Each checkpoint is Agreed, Proposed, or Missing, and carries what would move it. A level follows from them, and is never averaged or expressed as a percentage.

The 3 are generated from 1 versioned case record, so identifiers, scope, criteria, responsibilities, dates, evidence, and decisions agree across them. Both charters are the result of the assessment and are delivered as PDF, finished and not editable.

The workbook is delivered as an Excel workbook, built to be shared with your customer as it stands. It is locked except for the cells your team fills in.

Who may read what. The customer charter and the workbook are written to be shared with your customer, and Section 10 of the Service Terms (The deliverable) extends your licence to sharing them with your customer for this evaluation. The internal charter is for your team and your professional advisers alone. No part of a pack may be published, quoted in marketing, or presented as an endorsement or a certification.

4. What you supply

The customer and your own organisation, the problem and intended outcome, the proposed solution boundary, the intended decision and its date or trigger, the audience or participants, the relevant data, environment, access, and integration constraints, any supporting material, and the known risks and dependencies.

You must hold the right to supply everything you send, including anything belonging to your customer or a third party. You remain responsible for the accuracy of the facts you give us about your customer.

5. What we never do with a gap

Where something is not known, the pack records it as Missing, with what it prevents, the action which would resolve it, and who owns that action.

We do not invent a customer fact, a capability, a result, a named person, a commitment, or an approval. A gap is recorded, never filled.

6. What a pack claims, and what it does not

A pack is a proposal and a working record.

Every criterion, responsibility, date, and result carries 1 of 3 states. Agreed means the named party has confirmed it. Proposed means we are putting it forward and nobody has agreed it. Missing means it is not known.

The level is 1 of 3. Ready to run means every checkpoint is Agreed. Ready to agree means no checkpoint is Missing, and the question and the measures are Agreed. Not ready means a checkpoint is Missing, which is a normal state for a first pack. Ready to run records what the named parties have confirmed. It is not your customer's agreement to the evaluation as a whole, and it is not a prediction that the evaluation will succeed.

Delivery does not establish permission to execute, agreement from your customer, a measured result, acceptance, production readiness, or a Technical Win. Anything marked Proposed stays a proposal until the appropriate party confirms it, and that happens between you and your customer rather than here.

7. How a pack is produced

Stated plainly, because you are entitled to know how your pack is made.

A pack is drafted with AI assistance and finished by a person. We send your brief and any supporting material to Anthropic's Claude API, which produces a first draft of the pack. A reviewer then checks every part of it, corrects what is wrong, removes what does not hold, records as Missing anything the draft filled without a basis, and takes responsibility for the pack.

No pack reaches you without that review. The judgement in a pack is ours.

Our supplier does not use commercial API inputs or outputs to train its models, and deletes them within 30 days unless its own terms require it to keep one longer, such as an input flagged under its usage policy. The Privacy Notice names the supplier, its purpose, and its location. The Confidentiality and Materials document sets out what this means for your material.

8. How a request runs

Submit a brief through the intake form at companion.apexedgesalesengineering.com/readiness/start/, select your pack, and pay at the speed you choose. We acknowledge it, confirm the delivery date, and send the pack.

The form runs in your browser and sends none of your answers anywhere, except the email address you gave, which goes to Stripe when you choose to pay. Your draft, the request reference, and Stripe's identifier for your payment are held in your own browser's local storage. The draft is held until you open the email or select Clear form, and held again if you download a corrected brief after the email. When the brief downloads, the form gives the request a reference. When you choose a speed, it takes you to Stripe's checkout page to pay, carrying only that reference and the email address you gave. When you have paid, Stripe brings you back to the form, which writes the reference, the speed, and the payment's identifier into the email you send us. Your other answers, your brief, and your material never go to Stripe. Section 7 of the Privacy Notice (Who else sees it) names Stripe as a recipient.

Where the brief picks the pack we would not have picked, we say so before we draft. The choice stays yours and the price is the same either way.

9. What we accept, and how it reaches us

This Topic takes material by email, to readiness@apexedgesalesengineering.com, and by no other route today. The intake form produces a brief file, takes you to Stripe to pay, and opens an email to that address, and you attach the brief and any supporting material and send it yourself. Where we add another channel, such as a secure upload, this section names it before it is used, and Section 6 of the Confidentiality and Materials document (How it is held) applies to it unchanged.

We accept the common Office and document formats. Where we cannot open a file we will tell you within 1 working day and ask for another copy.

Do not send links to systems which require an account, a login, or a network connection to your environment. A pack is prepared from what you send, not from live systems.

10. Turnaround

We offer 2 speeds, defined below. Section 9 of the Service Terms (Turnaround) defines receipt and a working day, and the pricing page states what each speed costs.

These are targets and not guarantees. The date we confirm on acknowledgement is the date we work to, and where we expect to miss it we tell you before it passes and agree a revised date, as Section 9 of the Service Terms (Turnaround) sets out.

Where we cannot meet a same-day request, we will tell you by 14:00 UK time on the day of receipt and agree an alternative with you. The fee is not refunded, as Section 8 of the Service Terms (Fees and payment) sets out.

Receipt means the complete brief and any supporting material it refers to. The clock starts on the complete package and not on the first email. Where the brief is incomplete we come back and ask, and we confirm the new receipt time in writing.

11. Price

One flat price per pack, whichever pack you choose, because the pack decides what is produced and not what it costs. The pricing page states both speeds. Prices exclude VAT, which is added where it applies. You pay when you make the request, as Section 8 of the Service Terms (Fees and payment) sets out.

One purchase covers one evaluation: one customer, one solution scope, one intended decision. A materially different situation is a second pack. Where the customer, the scope, or the decision moves and you want the artefacts rebuilt around it, that is a new pack at the same published price.

Bespoke artefacts, live facilitation, detailed technical design, and performance analysis are outside the current offer and carry no published price.

12. Your material

Material you send is handled under the Confidentiality and Materials document and the Privacy Notice. We use it only to produce the accepted request. We do not use it as a case study, as an example, or as training material.

Your brief and supporting material are deleted on delivery of the pack. We do not keep a copy, so a later request for the same evaluation starts from a brief you send again.

13. What is out of scope

Running the demonstration or the evaluation. Implementing or configuring a solution. Provisioning an environment. Performing the testing. Negotiating with your customer. Managing the evaluation while it runs. Declaring production acceptance or a Technical Win.

A pack is not an audit. Where your question is whether an artefact you already hold is good enough to send, that is ApexIQ Companion Quality Audits and not this service.

14. Changes

We may change this document as the service develops. The version which applies to a request is the version published when we accepted that request. The date at the top is the date it last changed.

Questions about this document: legal@apexedgesalesengineering.com.