The Chalfant Group
The Chalfant Group is a technology advisory firm in New York’s Capital Region. It does one thing: AI readiness assessments for professional services firms.
Most firms are already using AI before anyone decides to. Documents get pasted into ChatGPT. A notetaker joins a client meeting. Someone buys a tool that promises to handle intake. None of it goes through review, because there isn’t one yet. The assessment establishes what’s actually in use, what it exposes the firm to, and what to do about it.
The engagement
Three weeks, fixed scope, starting at $4,500. It covers an inventory of the AI tools in use across the firm and the data each one touches; a review of where that usage runs against client confidentiality, engagement letters, insurance, or professional conduct rules; a short list of where AI is likely to save real hours and where it will quietly cost more than it saves; and a written policy staff can actually follow. It ends with a readout to the partners.
The work suits firms of roughly 10 to 200 people where the work product is confidential and the liability is real — accounting, law, insurance, wealth management, architecture and engineering, medical practices.
Christopher Chalfant, Managing Director
Fifteen years building and running production software rather than advising on it from a distance. Team lead on the engineering group at the International Association of Privacy Professionals. Senior developer at Blue Cross NC. Co-founder and technical lead of a platform that served more than 50,000 organizations. Currently CTO of an AI-powered operations platform, which means the systems in question are ones I still work in daily — I know where these tools fail because I run into it.
Engagements are led personally. When a specialist will get a better result faster, one is brought in, and the accountability stays with the firm either way.
Two firms at a time. A 20-minute call comes first, at no charge; if the assessment isn’t warranted yet, I’ll say so on that call.