Fractional CDO for your AI plans, from €2,400 a month.
A part-time data leader for companies that want AI to work on their own data but have no data leader yet. Start with a 10-day sprint: a data plan for your first 3 AI use cases, ready for your board.
€3,500 fixed · 10-day sprint · then from €2,400 a month, no full-time hire
Book a free 30-min call Prefer to talk now? +48 517 773 822Built on 15 years of production data work for a European payments group in 25 countries, a 2,000-store fashion retailer and a global FMCG brand. See the case studies
AI projects stall when nobody owns the data.
Gartner expects organisations to abandon 60% of AI projects that lack AI-ready data through 2026 (forecast, February 2025). A full-time chief data officer is out of reach for most mid-sized companies. A part-time one is not.
Decide
Which AI use cases are worth it, what data each one needs and what it will cost to get it ready.
Fix
Data owners, quality rules, access and personal data, so the same numbers mean the same thing everywhere.
Lead
Set the roadmap, steer your engineers and vendors, and help you hire your own data team.
Comply
EU AI Act: AI literacy duties (art. 4) apply since February 2025; data governance for high-risk systems (art. 10) from 2 December 2027.
Start with a 10-day sprint at a fixed price.
You get a plan your board can approve and a clear answer on whether you need a data leader.
Interviews and inventory
Short interviews with leadership and the people who own the data. A list of your systems, datasets and current reports.
Three AI use cases
We pick 3 use cases with clear value and map the data each one needs, what is missing and what is risky.
Readiness and AI Act check
A readiness score per use case and a check of your AI literacy and data governance against the EU AI Act.
Board presentation
- Data map for the 3 use cases
- Readiness scores and gap list
- 90-day plan with owners and costs
- A 60-minute presentation to your board
The sprint
10 working days, remote, one company.
- Payment
- 100% before the sprint starts.
- After
- Continue on a monthly retainer, or hand the plan to your own team.
- Access
- Read-only access is enough. NDA before we start.
- Not legal advice
- The AI Act check covers data practices; sign-off stays with your lawyer.
Then a data leader on a monthly retainer.
No full-time hire and no recruiter fee. Stay as long as it helps, and step back once your own head of data is in place.
Sprint
Data plan for 3 AI use cases, readiness scores, 90-day plan and board presentation.
Lite
Data roadmap, a monthly report to the board and an async channel for your team. Minimum 3 months.
Full
A 30/60/90-day plan, ownership of the data roadmap, vendors and hiring your data team or a full-time head of data.
Prices excl. VAT. Days are spread across the month as you need them: workshops, reviews, board meetings.
Data in SAP?
Mikhail has spent 15 years inside SAP BW, S/4HANA and Datasphere. Planning AI on SAP data starts with knowing what the fields really mean.
15 years of production data work.
The groundwork AI depends on: getting data out of many systems, modelling it, testing it and keeping it fresh.
Runs the data flow from the ERP into retail analytics, plus buying-plan and financial reporting on top. New development and incident fixing in one backlog.
Sales, materials and CRM data models for reporting across markets, plus third-line support for production data flows. 100% of incidents resolved.
ETL flows for North America waste reporting with Tableau on top. After go-live, waste-reporting execution went up 25%.
Marketing analytics end to end: several source systems into BigQuery, a warehouse model and management dashboards, with a team of up to 4.
FEMA programme, flood and Census data combined into one database and five geo-tagged dashboards for disaster-management teams.
Moved reporting from Azure and Power BI to a new warehouse and cloud analytics. Marketing, manufacturing, procurement and HR reporting across several go-lives.
Innovation-portfolio dashboards: projects by technology readiness level, economic effect per initiative and lab capacity, from project systems into one view.
Screenshots are real client dashboards with labels translated to English. Client names are removed, except VIA LINK, a non-profit that publishes its dashboards. References on request.
Who you’ll work with
Mikhail Mukhanov, founder of Datalift, data architect and team lead
15 years in data warehousing, pipelines and BI, leading teams of up to 15. Data integration, data quality and moving legacy reporting to the cloud for retail, FMCG, fintech, pharma and manufacturing. Four SAP certifications.
Who this is for.
Good fit
- Mid-sized companies using or planning AI with no data leader on the team
- CEOs whose board asks for an AI plan nobody can answer yet
- Teams whose AI pilot stalled on scattered or unreliable data
- Companies that need cover while they hire a full-time head of data
- Businesses whose key data lives in SAP
Not a fit
- Large enterprises that need a full-time CDO on site
- Teams that only need one data pipeline built
- Legal sign-off on the EU AI Act: that stays with your lawyer
- Defence and political-campaign work
Before you book.
Is this a chief data officer?
It is the work a chief data officer does, part-time: deciding what to build, setting rules for data, steering engineers and vendors and reporting to the board. We call the role head of data & AI because that is what most mid-sized companies need first.
How is this different from your 14-day AI data pilot?
The pilot builds one data pipeline for one AI use case. The sprint and the retainer decide which use cases to do, in what order and who owns the data. You can do the sprint first and the pilot next.
How soon can you start?
We aim to start within a week of the call. The 10 days start once interviews are booked and we have read-only access.
How do contracts and invoicing work?
A short services agreement with an NDA. The sprint is paid in full before it starts. Retainers are invoiced monthly in advance, in EUR from Poland; EU VAT rules apply. Lite has a 3-month minimum, then runs month to month.
Do you give legal advice on the EU AI Act?
No. We check your data practices against the AI literacy and data governance requirements and list the gaps. Your lawyer signs off on compliance.
How do you handle sensitive data?
We sign an NDA before access and work with read-only rights inside your systems. We do not copy your data out for the sprint.
Where are you based?
Warsaw, Poland. We work remotely in English with companies in the UK and the EU, and travel for board meetings when needed.