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Zaxby's × KandaAI Strategy & Governance
Prepared for Robert Hess & Mike Nettles
AI Strategy & Governance
AI Ground Truth. A discovery-first engagement for Zaxby's, corporate and franchise.
By Kanda · Ground Truth → Operate → Build
The Problem
AI is already happening across Zaxby's, much of it ungoverned.
Today's Challenges
Shadow AI everywhere
People use AI on personal accounts, outside IT visibility. Company data flows through tools no one has reviewed.
Vendor proliferation
Every SaaS adds an AI feature, every team spins up its own copilot. Spend fragments with no central view.
ROI you cannot defend
Spend is real but unclear. Far easier to start an initiative than to prove what it returned.
Why Now
0%
of companies have employees using AI and hiding it from IT. Most have no governance policy. (MIT, 2025)
Across 0+ locations
Decisions made now compound across corporate and the entire franchise base.
Agentic workflows are coming
Autonomous agents will act inside your systems. Govern before they arrive, not after.
02 / 10
The Idea
Strategy before spend.
Know what you have, what it costs, what it returns, and in what order to invest. Before you spend another dollar on AI.
This is the right moment. AI is a multi-year shift, and the advantage goes to the organizations that set the operating model now.
The Three Pillars
How the strategy holds together
01
Govern
Catalog and control shadow AI.
Full AI and shadow-AI inventory
Risk register with owners
Acceptable use and decision rights
02
Clarify
Spend and ROI you can defend.
Spend baseline by category
Forecast with vendor savings
ROI model and gating rubric
03
Prevent
Stop future shadow IT.
AI council with named owners
Vendor review before signing
Approved-tools list, quarterly
04 / 10
Where AI Creates Value
The art of the possible, measured against real ROI
Governance keeps you safe. This is where AI moves the numbers, starting with tools you already pay for.
Turn on what you own
AI is already surfacing across your stack: Workday, CrunchTime, Asana, Boomi. Switch on the AI inside the tools you already run: Workday AI across HR and finance, and CrunchTime's inventory intelligence for operators. Near-term, do-more-with-less ROI.
Win for the franchisee
The highest-leverage use cases help operators save money and run better stores. We rank by real P&L impact, not AI for marketing's sake.
Ready for agentic
Next: an app-less environment where agents orchestrate work behind the scenes. Onboarding a hire through Workday, staffing a regional manager, ordering equipment, all without anyone touching ten screens. We integrate through clean vendor APIs and connectors, and prepare you to adopt it deliberately.
We score every use case by impact and how much human-in-the-loop it needs, tier them (quick wins first, deeper builds next), sequence the roadmap, and hand you a framework to keep it current as the tools change.
05 / 10
The Team & The Bench
The team you get, and the bench behind it
The tiger team
AI Strategy Lead, fractional and exec-facing
Solution Architect
Product Manager
A 3-person team. Collaborative workshops, your people in the room.
Already trusted at Zaxby's
Rodrigo embedded since 2023. Valentina recognized by your team. The same Kanda model you already know.
Dan Kogan
Built and sold a production ML model to a Fortune 500 company. Founder, multiple exits.
Justin Bingham
Built a home-grown, agentic AI enterprise assistant that automates his email and Slack, saving him 480+ hours a year. Founder, multiple exits.
Chris McDermut
Leads in Let's Vibe, Colorado's largest AI business community (400+ members, WSJ-featured). Ran "Stop Prompting, Start Shipping."
Why Kanda, Not the Big Firms
A senior team that ships, not a slide factory
The typical consultancy
Senior consultants who run status calls
Partner billing-rate theater
100-page MSA, six-month procurement
Offshore handoff after the deal closes
A team you have never met
Kanda
Senior engineers who ship the work
Engineer pricing, no rate-markup theater
Start in weeks, not quarters
Individual continuity, no handoff
Already embedded since 2023, Rodrigo and Valentina
07 / 10
The Timeline
A 2 to 3 month discovery phase
Phases 2 and 3 are guided by Phase 1.
Months 1 to 3
Ground Truth
Inventory, baseline spend, map governance gaps, and produce the strategy. Corporate first, then franchise.
Preview · retainer
Operate
An embedded AI lead runs the governance and prioritization cadence the strategy defines.
Preview · 90-day builds
Build
Forward Deployed Engineers build the highest-value workflows, one at a time, fixed scope.
The Offer
AI Ground Truth: one fixed-scope engagement
Duration
90 days
Fixed scope. Corporate first, then franchise.
You give us
Access & people
Your tools, spend data, and your team for collaborative workshops.
You get
5 deliverables
Inventory and governance, spend and ROI model, prioritized roadmap, operating model.
The decision
One yes
A discovery phase, not an open-ended contract. Phases 2 and 3 are guided by Phase 1.
up to 30%
of enterprise software spend is commonly wasted on redundant or unused tools. The audit pays for itself by finding it. (industry research, 2025)
09 / 10
What You Walk Away With
A board-ready AI strategy you can fund. In 90 days.
1
What are we running, and is it safe?
Full AI and shadow-AI inventory, a risk register, and a governance framework on NIST AI RMF and ISO 42001.
2
What are we paying, and what does it return?
Spend baseline plus 12 and 24-month forecast, vendor-consolidation savings, and a gate every AI dollar must clear.
3
What do we do next, and who owns it?
A prioritized roadmap of your top 5 to 10 use cases and a decision-rights map with named owners.
Dan Kogan
Justin Bingham
Chris McDermut