AI consulting for small businesses without the enterprise playbook
Most AI consulting is priced and paced for companies with a transformation budget and a year to spend it. That model does not survive contact with a business where the owner is also doing the quoting. So the engagement is narrow on purpose: find the one process costing you the most, prove it works on your real data, and get it running in weeks.
WHAT YOU GET
Where small businesses actually gain
These come up over and over, and they have one thing in common: high volume, low variation, and a direct line to revenue.
First response
Answering an enquiry in seconds rather than hours. The cost of being slow is invisible, because you never hear from the person who went elsewhere.
Quoting and intake
Turning a message into a structured record with the details you need, so nobody retypes anything into three systems.
Scheduling and follow-up
Booking, reminders, and the second and third contact that reliably gets skipped when everyone is busy.
Back office
The admin between a sale and getting paid. Unglamorous, high volume, and usually the cheapest hours to buy back.
Buy over build
Most small-business needs are met by a tool that already exists. We have no product to protect, so we say which one.
Handover
You should be able to run and change it without us. A system only a consultant can operate is a subscription you did not agree to.
Related: AI automation consulting, workflow automation, and work out the ROI first.
HOW IT WORKS
One process, working, in weeks
A first automation is typically live in 2 to 6 weeks. The scope is deliberately small so you see it work before committing further.
Find the one
Rank your repetitive work by volume times time. The winner is usually boring and rarely the thing people complain about most.
Check it is worth it
Do the arithmetic honestly. Plenty of processes do not clear the bar, and finding that out costs nothing.
Build the narrow version
The smallest thing that removes the work. Not a platform, not a phase one of four.
Hand it over
You own it, you can change it, and you decide whether there is a second project.
When we tell small businesses not to hire us
Often, and it is the most useful thing we do on a first call. The clearest case is low volume: a task that happens twice a month will not repay a build no matter how annoying it is, and the process will have changed before the payback arrives. The arithmetic is unforgiving and it takes about five minutes.
The second case is that a tool already does it. A great deal of what small businesses want built is a scheduling product, a shared inbox, or a CRM feature somebody has already shipped and maintains for a monthly fee. Paying us a project fee to rebuild that is a worse deal for you on cost, timeline, and who fixes it in a year.
The third is that the process is not written down. If the way the work gets done lives in one person’s head and has three exceptions a week, automating it locks in the confusion and makes the exceptions invisible. That is a process problem with a cheap fix, and it has to happen first.
- Volume checked before anything is scoped, using your numbers
- An existing tool recommended whenever one fits
- First automation live in weeks, not at the end of a quarter
- Handover you can operate without a retainer
Frequently Asked Questions
Which task eats the most of your week?
Book a free strategy session. We will do the arithmetic on it with you, including when the answer is that it is not worth automating.
Book a Free AI Strategy Session