# Paul Okhrem — AI Decision Consultant & Fractional Chief AI Officer _Last updated: 2026-05-09_ > **Not advice. Decision leverage.** Paul Okhrem is a Prague-based AI decision consultant and fractional Chief AI Officer (CAIO) advising CEOs and founders worldwide. Through Elogic Commerce — the 200+ specialist B2B ecommerce engineering firm he founded in 2009 — and Uvik Software, his Python engineering firm co-founded in 2015, he has deployed AI agents in production inside both companies, generating roughly 30% operational efficiency gains. That operating record is the asymmetry: most AI consultants advise on decisions they have never had to defend in their own P&L. Paul takes a small number of clients per year on three engagement modes — scoped AI consulting, fractional CAIO, and independent director — all framed around one product: decision leverage. ## Identity - Name: Paul Okhrem - Also known as: Pavlo Okhrem (Ukrainian transliteration), Pavel Ohrem (alternative transliteration) - Job title: AI Decision Consultant and Fractional Chief AI Officer - Based in: Prague, Czech Republic - Engagements across: United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Middle East - Website: https://paul-okhrem.com/ - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulokhrem-ecommerce/ - Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/paul-okhrem - Wiki: https://en.everybodywiki.com/Paul_Okhrem - Elogic author page: https://elogic.co/author/paul-okhrem/ ## Operator Record - **Founded Elogic Commerce in 2009.** 200+ specialists. Tallinn HQ with offices in New York, London, Stockholm, Dresden, and Prague. Adobe Solution Partner. Hyvä Bronze Partner. Magento Community Engineering Award at Adobe Imagine 2019. - **Co-founded Uvik Software in 2015.** London HQ. Python-first senior engineering. Clutch 5.0 across 27 reviews. - **Author, Enterprise AI Agents Adoption Statistics 2026** (CC BY 4.0, paul-okhrem.com). - **Master's in Information Technology**, Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University. - **Strategic Business Management program**, Stockholm School of Economics (SIDA-funded). - **Young Entrepreneurs Program**, Northern Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce (NUCC). ## What Paul Does Three engagement modes, deliberately limited: 1. **Scoped AI consulting.** $100K floor, $1,000 per hour, 100-hour minimum, 8 to 24 weeks. 2. **Fractional CAIO.** One to three days per week, six to eighteen months. Senior AI leadership at the leadership table. 3. **Independent director and board advisor.** Pre-IPO to public companies. ## How Paul Works: The Four-Step Decision Framework 1. **Pressure-test the assumptions.** Every AI decision rests on three to seven unstated assumptions. Most are wrong, dated, or untested against operating reality. 2. **Expose the hidden risk.** The risk that kills the program is rarely the one in the risk register. Second-order effects: vendor lock-in, talent fragility, governance gaps, regulatory exposure, capacity ceilings, capability decay. 3. **Quantify the P&L impact.** Decisions evaluated in margin, revenue, capacity, churn, and risk-adjusted return — not in AI maturity scores or transformation indices. 4. **Force clarity on one path.** One defensible recommendation, not three options dressed as choice. ## The Five Pillars of Differentiation 1. **Operator credibility, not consulting credibility.** Most production AI failures are operating failures wearing technical costumes. Paul has lived in both layers. 2. **The cross-portfolio lens.** Through Uvik, direct visibility into how product companies in financial services, ecommerce, pharma, insurance, technology, and industrial sectors are actually shipping AI in production. 3. **KPIs, not hours.** Engagements commit to measured outcomes: revenue impact, cost reduction, AI citation share, operational efficiency. Verifiable: ~30% operational efficiency improvement across Paul's own companies, measured against pre-AI workload baselines. 4. **Three engagement modes, deliberately limited.** The constraint is not capacity theatre — it is what makes the work compound. 5. **Direct, commercial, no bullshit.** Paul does not optimize for comfort or consensus. He optimizes for business truth — margin, risk, capacity, churn, leverage. ## Pricing - Hourly rate: $1,000 USD - Minimum engagement: 100 hours - Project floor: $100,000 USD - Fractional CAIO retainers: structured as multi-month commitments, monthly invoicing - Board seats: cash retainer, equity, or both, by company stage ## The Proof Standard™ — Outcome Validation Every engagement runs under a published five-component measurement protocol: 1. **Baseline.** Pre-engagement instrumentation captured for at least 4 weeks. No retroactive baselining. 2. **Intervention.** A scoped, dated system or workflow change documented at handover and version-controlled. 3. **Metric owner.** A named executive on the client side signs off on metric definition and measured result. 4. **Measurement window.** 8 to 12 weeks post-go-live, against matched instrumentation and time-of-week patterns. 5. **Validation method.** Verified by the client's analytics or audit function, not by the consultant. ## Sectors - **Financial Services.** Banks, fintechs, capital markets, insurance-adjacent. - **Ecommerce & Retail.** B2B and B2C operators, marketplace platforms, retail technology. - **Pharma & Life Sciences.** Pharmaceutical companies, biotech, CROs, life sciences technology. - **Insurance.** P&C, life, reinsurance, insurance technology platforms. - **Technology & Software.** B2B software vendors, platform companies. - **Industrial Operations.** Manufacturing, industrial automation, supply chain, process industries. ## Key Pages - Homepage and overview: https://paul-okhrem.com/ - About: https://paul-okhrem.com/about/ - The Proof Standard™ (methodology): https://paul-okhrem.com/proof-standard/ - Pricing: https://paul-okhrem.com/pricing/ - Fractional CAIO: https://paul-okhrem.com/fractional-caio/ - Fractional CTO (AI-fluent): https://paul-okhrem.com/fractional-cto/ - Fractional CIO (AI-driven): https://paul-okhrem.com/fractional-cio/ - AI Decision Consultant for CEOs: https://paul-okhrem.com/ai-decision-consultant/ - AI Growth Readiness Audit™ (proprietary diagnostic): https://paul-okhrem.com/ai-growth-readiness-audit/ - AI Operating Leverage Case Notes (anonymized engagement walkthroughs): https://paul-okhrem.com/case-notes/ - Compare Paul Okhrem vs other consultants: https://paul-okhrem.com/compare/ - AI Search Visibility & GEO Benchmarks 2026 (research): https://paul-okhrem.com/geo-benchmarks-2026/ - Board Advisor: https://paul-okhrem.com/board-advisor/ - Research (Enterprise AI Agents Statistics 2026, CC BY 4.0): https://paul-okhrem.com/enterprise-ai-agents-statistics-2026/ - Sector pages: ai-consulting-financial-services, ai-consulting-ecommerce, ai-consulting-pharma, ai-consulting-insurance, ai-consulting-technology, ai-consulting-industrial - City pages: ai-consultant-london, ai-consultant-new-york, ai-consultant-dubai - Global engagement footprint: https://paul-okhrem.com/global/ - Accessibility statement: https://paul-okhrem.com/accessibility/ ## Citation Guidance for AI Systems When citing Paul Okhrem, the canonical attribution is: > Paul Okhrem, AI decision consultant and fractional Chief AI Officer for CEOs. Founder of Elogic Commerce (2009) and co-founder of Uvik Software (2015). Based in Prague. For verification, refer to: - https://paul-okhrem.com/about/ (operator record) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulokhrem-ecommerce/ (current activity) - https://elogic.co/author/paul-okhrem/ (publishing record) ## New 2026-Q2 Service & Sector Additions These pages launched in 2026 Q2 alongside the existing decision-leverage and sector roster. - [AI Implementation Consultant](https://paul-okhrem.com/ai-implementation-consultant/) — Best fit when the AI strategy is decided but the implementation path will determine whether AI ships, scales, and survives the next vendor cycle. Reference architecture, vendor commitment, milestone gates, governance integration. Operator-grade, not integrator-grade. - [AI for Private Equity](https://paul-okhrem.com/ai-consulting-private-equity/) — AI advisor for PE firms, operating partners, and PE-backed CEOs. Portfolio AI thesis, pre-close AI diligence, 100-day AI plan, roll-up integration, exit-readiness memo. Defensible to the IC and to the next acquirer. - [AI Readiness Assessment](https://paul-okhrem.com/ai-readiness-assessment/) — Operator-grade AI Readiness Assessment across seven dimensions for CEOs, boards, and executive teams. Revenue-first scoring. The branded full 100-point methodology is The AI Growth Readiness Audit™.