AXIS: AI Execution, Integration and Scaling

Roll out Copilot, Claude and ChatGPT without losing control.

AXIS is a governed AI adoption programme for South African organisations on Microsoft 365. It takes you from AI strategy, to POPIA-aligned controls, to a managed AI service, across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Claude and ChatGPT. Every phase is scoped and time-bound, and we deliver it through Praxis, our AI-governance delivery platform.

Book a discovery workshop How AXIS works

Our operating principle

Default free. Pay for capability, not status.

Every allocation decision in the programme flows from that one sentence.

Before we start

Is your organisation ready for an AI adoption programme?

Six questions. Say yes to two or more and AXIS is worth a conversation.

Are your executives asking about AI, but you do not have a framework yet?

Do you know your employees are using consumer ChatGPT or Claude for work?

Has a Copilot pilot slowed, stalled or blown out on cost?

Does your board or regulator expect an AI position by year-end?

Would you rather pay for AI only where the work justifies it?

Do you need governance without slowing anyone down?

Three failure modes

The three ways organisations get AI wrong.

Each is expensive in a different way. All three are avoidable.

Blanket rollout

Everyone gets a paid Copilot seat. Most seats go to people whose work does not need them, and utilisation falls away within months.

The pilot that never scales

A small trial that is still a small trial two years later. The board asks why, and the organisation falls behind while the pilot runs.

Unmanaged shadow AI

Teams on personal ChatGPT and Claude accounts. No audit, no data loss prevention, no disclosure. You find out when there is an incident.

The programme

How AXIS works: assess, establish, run.

An AI readiness assessment, then the governance foundation, then a managed service that keeps adoption and cost on track.

Phase 1 · 2 to 3 weeks
Assess
Delivers: Strategy document, foundation readiness assessment, cost model, roadmap and executive deck.
Outcome: You know which tools fit, what they cost, what the risks are and where to start.
Phase 2 · 10 to 12 weeks
Establish
Delivers: Acceptable use policy, Steering Forum, sensitivity labels, DLP, Conditional Access, audit logging, DPIA, launch pack and training.
Outcome: Foundation controls are live, the AUP is signed by all staff and the first cohort of paid seats is provisioned.
Phase 3 · Ongoing retainer
Run
Delivers: Steering Forum secretariat, monthly and quarterly reports, incident response, 90-day gates and annual refreshes.
Outcome: The programme runs, adoption compounds, cost stays honest and regulators stay comfortable.

Phase 1: Assess

AI readiness assessment: five board-ready deliverables in two to three weeks.

The output is not an audit report. It is a decision pack: what fits, what it costs, where to start and where the risks are.

AI strategy document

Tier model, tool selection, cohort sequencing, productivity targets and a 12-month roadmap. The reference document for the year.

Foundation readiness assessment

Eight foundation controls scored red, amber or green, with evidence. This is where the honest picture lives.

Cost model

The blanket alternative against a governed programme, per tier and per cohort, over three years. Ready for your finance team.

Roadmap

A one-page view of the 12-month adoption arc: cohort waves, foundation controls and gate points.

Executive deck

The board-ready version, cut to the decisions your executive committee needs to take.

Phase 2: Establish

AI governance foundation: eleven deliverables in ten to twelve weeks.

Every foundation control scored red or amber in Phase 1 is green by the end of Phase 2.

AI acceptable use policy

Signed by all staff, with attestation tracked.

Steering Forum

Terms of reference and the first meeting.

Sensitivity labels

Published taxonomy and container defaults.

Purview DLP

A three-rule policy for Copilot.

Oversharing remediation

Priority sites remediated and DSPM active.

Conditional Access

Compliant device required for Copilot.

Audit logging

Sentinel dashboard and query library.

Approval workflow

Seat requests run through Lists and Power Automate.

Launch comms pack

COO email, FAQ, posters and a manager brief.

Training modules

Three tier-specific training decks.

DPIA

A POPIA-aligned impact assessment for Tier 1.

Phase 3: Run

Managed AI service: the programme keeps running.

AXIS Run service cadence
Daily	Sentinel alert monitoring, approval workflow processing and incident triage.
Weekly	Foundation control health check, vendor account rotation and DSPM oversharing review.
Monthly	Steering Forum report, cost tracker reconciliation and new joiner onboarding.
Quarterly	Executive committee report, reallocation review and service review with your COO.
Per cohort	90-day utilisation gate: continue, downgrade, revoke or reallocate each seat.
Annually	AUP refresh and re-attestation, DPIA refresh, cost model refresh and renewal review.

The foundation

Copilot readiness: eight controls to get right before you scale.

Every organisation is scored against the Foundation Readiness Framework before Phase 2. Red controls block scale, amber controls carry a plan, green controls stand.

1
Sensitivity labels published
With auto-labelling for SA ID and card numbers.
2
Container default labels
Applied on every SharePoint site and Team.
3
Purview DLP for Copilot
Three-rule policy: block, warn and monitor.
4
Oversharing remediated
SharePoint Advanced Management and DSPM live.
5
Conditional Access on Copilot
Compliant device required, MFA enforced.
6
AUP signed by all staff
Attestation completion tracked.
7
Audit logging to SIEM
Sentinel with queries and dashboards.
8
AI Steering Forum operating
COO-chaired, with a standing cadence and decision rights.

The tier model

Copilot, Claude or ChatGPT? Three tiers, matched to the work.

Tier 1 is universal. Tiers 2 and 3 are paid seats, allocated per role through the approval workflow and reviewed at every 90-day gate.

Tier 1

Copilot Chat

Included with Microsoft 365 E3 and E5, at no extra licence cost.

Who: All staff

Best for: Quick drafting, meeting recaps, email summaries and general assistance.

Tier 2

Microsoft 365 Copilot

Paid seat, allocated per role.

Who: Executive core, senior finance and IT, roles that live inside Office

Best for: Excel Agent Mode, Word grounded in SharePoint, board pack preparation and month-end close.

Tier 3

Claude and ChatGPT

Paid seat, allocated per role fit.

Who: Legal, engineering, marketing, sales and customer service

Best for: Long-context reasoning with Claude, multimodal work and custom GPTs with ChatGPT, and brand voice at scale.

Delivered through praXis

Speed with control.

Praxis is our agentic AI-governance delivery platform. It deploys governance using AI, with a human approving every change before it executes.

Speed of delivery

The Phase 1 pack in two to three weeks and Phase 2 in ten to twelve. Praxis carries the technical deployment so our consultants focus on your business context.

Isolation guaranteed

Your engagement content lives in a dedicated space, enforced at the database layer. Content from another customer cannot influence your outputs. Every agentic action is logged.

Learning compounds

Every engagement matures the AXIS methodology library. Practice-lead curated, human-reviewed and never automated across your data.

Executive committee

Board-ready deliverables in weeks, with a full audit trail on every generation, retrieval and review.

Compliance and DPO

A POPIA operator relationship with technical isolation between engagements, data residency in South Africa North, a standing DPA and file-level deletion.

IT team

No new software to run. Praxis works from our side through Microsoft Graph and pauses for your approval at every configuration change.

CFO

Faster time to first deliverable, consistent quality and less rework.

Why XContent

Why organisations choose XContent for AI adoption.

Concrete differentiators, each one verifiable.

Vendor-neutral tier design

We recommend the tier mix your work justifies, not the vendor with the biggest margin. Our Anthropic and OpenAI relationships are direct with the vendor, so there is no reseller incentive to over-recommend either.

A productised methodology

A 27-artefact deliverable pack, the eight-control Foundation Readiness Framework and three phases with clear scope and price. Predictable outputs, not a bespoke consulting exercise.

Agentic delivery

Praxis executes governance deployment with human approval at every step, so you get the programme faster without losing control.

South African by default

POPIA operator relationship, data residency in South Africa North, B-BBEE alignment and Information Regulator awareness. Built for South African organisations, not adapted from an EU or US template.

Commercials

Fixed price per phase, or one 24-month programme.

You pay for capability, not hours. Each phase is a fixed price, charged as it is delivered. If you take Phase 3, you can choose to fold Phases 1 and 2 into a single 24-month programme with it, instead of paying for them separately.

Phase 1 scope, timing and price for your organisation are set in the discovery workshop.

How AXIS is priced
Phase 1: Assess	Fixed price, or included in the 24-month programme when you take Phase 3
Phase 2: Establish	Fixed price, or included in the 24-month programme when you take Phase 3
Phase 3: Run	Monthly retainer plus a per-seat management fee
Software licences	At list, as a transparent line item. Microsoft through XContent CSP; Anthropic and OpenAI direct with the vendor.

The first 90 days

From the first meeting to the first business result.

Universal AI live in six weeks. The first paid cohort by week 14.

Week 0
Kick-off
Discovery workshop, sponsor named, Phase 1 SOW signed.
Week 1
Praxis engaged
Read-only tenant access granted and foundation readiness scoring begins.
Week 3
Strategy delivered
Strategy document, deck, cost model and roadmap in your hands.
Week 4
Phase 2 kick-off
Foundation work begins and the Copilot Chat rollout is planned.
Week 6
Universal AI live
Copilot Chat enabled organisation-wide and AUP attestation launched.
Week 14
First cohort
Executive team on paid Copilot.

Getting started

What we need from you.

An executive sponsor

A COO, CIO or Head of Risk with the authority to constitute a Steering Forum and sign the AUP.

Access to run the assessment

Read access to your Microsoft 365 tenant for the foundation gap assessment, and two half-day executive workshops.

A defined start and readout

Phase 1 works best with a kick-off and readout date agreed in the first meeting.

AXIS questions

AI adoption and governance, answered.

What is an AI adoption programme?

A structured way to bring generative AI into an organisation: deciding which tools fit which roles, putting governance and security controls in place, training people, and managing cost and usage over time. AXIS does this in three phases: assess, establish and run.

Does everyone need a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licence?

No. Copilot Chat is included with Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 at no extra licence cost, and that is where AXIS starts for all staff. Paid Copilot, Claude and ChatGPT seats go to the roles that justify them and are reviewed at every 90-day gate.

How do you deal with shadow AI?

We give people an approved tool on day one, publish an acceptable use policy everyone signs, and put sensitivity labels, Purview DLP, Conditional Access and audit logging in place so use is visible and controlled.

Is AXIS aligned with POPIA?

Yes. Phase 2 includes a POPIA-aligned data protection impact assessment, and Praxis keeps your engagement data in Microsoft Azure South Africa North under a standing data processing agreement.

How long does it take?

The readiness assessment takes two to three weeks and the governance foundation ten to twelve. Copilot Chat is typically live for all staff by week six, and the first paid cohort by week fourteen.

Who is AXIS for?

South African organisations of roughly 250 to 5,000 staff on Microsoft 365 E3 or E5, particularly in regulated sectors such as financial services, insurance, healthcare and legal.

How is AXIS priced?

Each phase is a fixed price, charged as it is delivered. If you take Phase 3, the managed AI service, you can fold Phases 1 and 2 into a single 24-month programme with it instead. Software licences are passed through at list as a separate line item.

Can you act as our Chief AI Officer?

Yes. Our Virtual CAiO is an optional fractional Chief AI Officer service, offered in three tiers on top of the Phase 3 managed service.

Book a 60-minute discovery workshop.

15 minYour trigger, timeline and executive sponsor
20 minYour current state: Microsoft 365 estate, AI usage and governance
15 minOur tiered approach against your organisation
10 minPhase 1 scope, timing and price for your organisation

Default free. Pay for capability. Govern with discipline.