Use when AI Data Foundation Audit is needed to produce an evidence-backed audit report for social-media or digital-marketing work; use `ai-readiness-diagnostic` when its narrower outcome is requested.
Use when AI Data Foundation Audit is needed to produce an evidence-backed audit report for social-media or digital-marketing work; use `ai-readiness-diagnostic` when its narrower outcome is requested.
Use this skill when the requested outcome is specifically a evidence-backed audit report and the supplied brief falls within ai data foundation audit.
Do Not Use When
Use ai-readiness-diagnostic when its narrower output is the real deliverable; do not use this skill as a generic substitute.
Do not use it to publish, send, spend, alter a live account, or make unsupported legal, platform, performance, or certification claims.
Required Inputs
Artefact
Source/provider
Required?
If absent
AI marketing use-case brief, intended human control point and success measure
Requester or approved brief
Yes
Stop and request the missing decision context.
Brand voice, offer facts, constraints and approvals
Client source pack or authorised owner
Conditional
State assumptions; do not invent names, prices, results or approvals.
Performance, platform or research evidence used for claims
Traceable export, URL, document or named source
Conditional
Issue a qualified finding and identify the evidence needed.
Capability and Permission Boundaries
Default to read-only: inspect supplied material and report findings. Editing, publishing, contacting people, spending, or changing live systems requires separate explicit authority. Minimum capabilities are read access to supplied files and search across the authorised evidence set. Use only the files, tools, accounts and evidence made available for the engagement, expose every unassessed check, and obtain explicit authority before any mutation.
Degraded Mode
Fallback: if files, network access, platform data, language review or production tools are unavailable, return the narrowest useful qualified evidence-backed audit report; mark unavailable checks not assessed and never convert them into a pass.
Decision Rules
Choice
Action
Failure or risk avoided
Data readiness, AI maturity and risk support the proposed operating level
Choose the lowest viable automation level and define its human approval gate.
Automating an unsafe or unevaluable marketing process.
A required fact or approval is missing
Stop that claim or action; request it or use an explicit placeholder.
Fabricated facts, implied consent or unauthorised publication.
Evidence is partial but a useful draft is possible
Deliver a qualified draft with gaps and the next verification step.
Treating an unassessed requirement as passed.
Workflow
Confirm the exact evidence-backed audit report, consumer, market, channel and approval boundary; route to ai-readiness-diagnostic if it is the closer match.
Inventory supplied facts, source provenance, constraints and missing inputs; stop if the objective, audience or authority is unknowable.
Select the domain method and record the material decision behind it before drafting.
Produce the smallest complete evidence-backed audit report; keep facts traceable and placeholders visibly unresolved.
Test the result against the decision table, domain quality criteria and anti-slop gate; recover by narrowing or qualifying unsupported portions.
Deliver the artefact with evidence, assumptions, unassessed checks and the next approval or verification step.
Outputs
Artefact
Consumer
Observable acceptance condition
Evidence-backed audit report
Requester, client reviewer or delivery team
The evidence-backed audit report addresses the named audience and objective, records assumptions, and passes the skill's domain checks without invented facts.
Decision and gap note
Approver or next workflow
Names the chosen route, evidence used, unresolved inputs and any action requiring authority.
Evidence Produced
Evidence
Format
Acceptance condition
Finding-to-source register and unassessed-check list
Inline table, checklist or linked source note
Every material claim, decision and unavailable check is traceable.
Quality Standards
Preserve the domain guidance and East African market context below; replace it only when the requester names another market.
Use British English unless the target language or market requires otherwise, and verify names, figures, quotations and platform rules before use.
Make the key choice visible, cover failure and edge cases, and keep the result ready for its named consumer.
Run the repository's anti-ai-slop ship gate; a blocking factual, cultural, safety or permission defect stops release.
Anti-Patterns
Writing before the objective and audience are known. Fix: stop and obtain the missing brief fields.
Reusing a neighbouring skill's template because the headings look similar. Fix: route by the requested evidence-backed audit report, not vocabulary overlap.
Adding a price, result, quotation, platform limit or cultural claim without a traceable source. Fix: verify it or qualify/remove it.
Treating missing access, evidence or native-language review as approval. Fix: mark the check not assessed and narrow the result.
Publishing, sending, spending or changing a live account from drafting authority alone. Fix: obtain explicit action-specific authority and retain the approval record.
Ask for the following before generating any deliverable:
Client business name — trading name as it appears to customers
Industry — e.g. retail, hospitality, healthcare, professional services
Country/city — default: Uganda / East Africa if not specified
All customer data sources currently in use — tick all that apply:
WhatsApp chat history | Facebook Page DMs and comments | Email (Gmail /
Outlook) | CRM software (name it) | Excel / Google Sheets | Accounting
software (e.g. QuickBooks, Wave) | Other (describe)
Primary AI use case the data will support — select one:
Content personalisation | Chatbot knowledge base | Predictive analytics |
Audience segmentation
Approximate number of customer records — total across all systems
(even a rough estimate is useful)
Why Data Quality is Step 1
Three independent books converge on the same conclusion: data quality is the
single most important prerequisite for any AI marketing investment (Venkatesan
and Lecinski, 2026; Lamplugh, 2024; Ltifi, 2025). AI tools amplify what they
receive — clean data produces better outputs; dirty data produces worse outputs
at speed.
For East African clients specifically, the data challenge is structural.
Customer data is fragmented across WhatsApp chat histories, Facebook Page DMs,
manual Excel spreadsheets, phone contacts, and verbal records. Before any AI
tool can add value, this fragmentation must be addressed.
The investment in data hygiene is not a technical exercise — it is the
commercial prerequisite for every AI use case. Skipping this step does not
save time; it wastes the cost of the AI tool.
The EA Data Reality
Map the typical Ugandan SME data environment honestly before proceeding:
WhatsApp — customer enquiries, orders, and complaints are stored in chat
history; rarely exported or structured; impossible to query or analyse at
scale
Facebook Page — post comments, DM threads, and page insights are
exportable via Meta Business Suite but rarely exported; valuable for
sentiment and engagement data
Email — enquiries and newsletter replies sit in Gmail or Outlook, rarely
in a CRM; no linkage to purchase data
Excel spreadsheets — customer names, phone numbers, and purchase history
recorded manually; often incomplete, inconsistent formatting, and not
regularly updated
Verbal / in-person — walk-in customers and cash transactions frequently
go unrecorded entirely
Result — the same customer may appear in three or four separate systems
with different name spellings, no unique identifier, and no purchase history
linkage. AI tools cannot perform matching, personalisation, or segmentation
on this data without prior consolidation.
Data Hygiene Checklist (20 Items)
Complete this checklist for the client. Score each item Yes / No / Partial.
Flag any No or Partial item as a remediation priority.
Completeness
Are all customer records complete — name, contact detail, and transaction
history at minimum?
Are there records with missing phone numbers or email addresses?
Are product and service names consistently recorded — not "cake" in some
rows and "birthday cake" in others?
Are dates recorded in a consistent format (DD/MM/YYYY throughout)?
Accuracy
Are phone numbers in the correct format for Uganda (+256 or 0)?
Are prices recorded in UGX consistently — not a mix of UGX and USD?
Are customer names spelled consistently across all systems?
Are inactive or churned customers flagged and separated from active
customer records?
Consistency
Is each customer recorded once across all systems — not duplicated
across WhatsApp, Excel, and email?
Are product categories consistent — not "electronics" in one place and
"gadgets" in another?
Are campaign names consistent across Meta, email, and CRM records?
Are staff names or salesperson records consistent for attribution
purposes?
Accessibility
Is data stored in a format the AI tool can read — CSV, Excel, or plain
text — not only in printed records or chat messages?
Can the data be exported from its current system? Some WhatsApp and
Facebook data requires manual export steps.
Is the data accessible to the team members who will operate the AI
tools?
Are data access credentials documented and stored securely?
Governance
Is there a named data owner — one person responsible for data quality?
Is there a documented process for adding new customer records?
Is customer data held in compliance with Uganda's Data Protection and
Privacy Act (2019)? Confirm that consent has been obtained and data is not
shared without permission.
Is there a data retention policy — documenting how long customer records
are kept and when they are deleted?
Data Mapping Framework
Follow this step-by-step process to consolidate fragmented data into a single
master customer list:
List all data sources — WhatsApp, Facebook, email, Excel, accounting
software, and any others identified in the Required Input.
For each source, record: what data it contains; its format; estimated
record count; date last updated.
Identify the primary identifier — the field that will link records
across systems. Phone number is the most reliable identifier in Uganda,
because it is more consistent than email across both urban and peri-urban
customers.
Export all sources to Excel or CSV — request exports from WhatsApp
(chat export), Meta Business Suite (contacts and insights), Gmail
(contacts), and any CRM or accounting software in use.
Standardise the phone number field across all exports — remove spaces,
remove hyphens, ensure all numbers use the +256 international format.
Use VLOOKUP or a de-duplication tool to identify records appearing in
multiple sources. Google Sheets has a built-in Remove Duplicates function;
Excel has a Remove Duplicates tool under the Data tab.
Build a master customer list — one row per customer, linking all data
points: name, phone number, email (if available), source systems, last
transaction date, and any segment tags.
30-Day Remediation Plan Template
Apply this plan after the hygiene checklist is complete and the top three
issues are identified:
Week 1 — Map and assess
Complete the data mapping framework. Run the hygiene checklist for all 20
items. Identify the top three issues (typically: missing contact details,
duplicate records, and inconsistent product naming). Assign a named owner for
each issue.
Week 2 — Fix completeness
Fill missing contact details by following up with customers via WhatsApp or
in-person. Add missing transaction dates from accounting records or receipts.
Ensure all product and service names follow a single agreed naming convention.
Week 3 — Fix accuracy
Standardise all phone numbers to +256 format. Correct misspellings in customer
names. Merge duplicate records into the master list. Flag and separate inactive
customers.
Week 4 — Implement governance
Assign the named data owner formally. Document the new record process: how new
customers are added, which fields are required, and who is responsible.
Confirm Uganda Data Protection and Privacy Act (2019) compliance — consent
records in place, retention policy documented. Export the final master customer
list and confirm it is ready for AI tool import.
Output: a clean master customer list ready for import into the AI tool of
choice, plus a documented data governance process that prevents regression.
Tool Options
Tool
Use
EA accessibility
Approx. cost
Google Sheets
Data consolidation and de-duplication
Yes — free
Free
Airtable
Structured database with easy import/export
Yes — free tier
Free tier available
HubSpot Free CRM
Customer database with basic automation
Yes — free
Free
Notion
Flexible database and knowledge base
Yes — free tier
Free tier available
Excel
Standard spreadsheet de-duplication
Yes
Included in Office 365
For most Ugandan SMEs, Google Sheets is the recommended starting point: it is
free, collaborative, accessible on mobile, and sufficient for up to several
thousand customer records.
Handoff — Connecting Clean Data to AI Tools
Once the audit and remediation are complete, connect the master customer list
to the relevant AI tools:
RAG knowledge base (see ai-rag-brand-knowledge-base) — upload the
product catalogue and FAQs derived from the clean data
Chatbot knowledge base (see ai-whatsapp-chatbot-design) — upload
approved response templates and policies built from the structured data
Segmentation tool — import the master customer list with segment tags
for audience targeting
Predictive analytics tool (see ai-predictive-analytics-social) —
import transaction history and engagement history for churn and upsell
modelling
Do not connect any AI tool until the Week 4 governance step is complete. A
tool connected to unclean data will produce unreliable outputs and undermine
client confidence in AI marketing.
Quality Criteria
Good output from this skill meets all of the following standards:
All customer data sources mapped — no source overlooked, including informal
sources such as verbal records and WhatsApp chat histories
Data hygiene checklist completed in full — all 20 items scored Yes, No, or
Partial with priority flags applied to every No and Partial item
Data mapping framework completed — master customer list built using phone
number as the primary identifier, with all sources consolidated
Top three hygiene issues identified with a specific, actionable remediation
step for each — not generic advice, but concrete next actions for this client
30-day remediation plan documented with named owner and weekly milestones —
not a suggestion but a committed plan
Data governance framework in place — named data owner, new record process
documented, and responsibility assigned
Uganda Data Protection and Privacy Act (2019) compliance confirmed — consent
documented for all records, data sharing restrictions understood, retention
policy set
Clean data handed off to at least one AI tool with a verification step
confirming that outputs have improved compared to pre-audit baseline
References
Venkatesan, R. and Lecinski, J. (2026) The AI Marketing Canvas, 2nd edn.
Stanford University Press.
Lamplugh, M. (2024) The AI Marketing Playbook, 2nd edn. Mercury Learning.
Ltifi, M. (ed.) (2025) Advances in Digital Marketing in the Era of
Artificial Intelligence. CRC Press.
