AI agency Amersfoort: AI automation for small businesses in the region
If you are looking for an AI agency in Amersfoort, here is the honest part first: we do not have an office in Amersfoort. Ours is in Bussum, about half an hour down the A1. What we do instead is come to you, spend half a day watching how the work really runs, and only then build anything.
AI automation here means taking over work that comes back every week, connecting the systems you already run, and building custom software where an off-the-shelf package stops. Chatbots are not our product. This is about business processes — the order somebody retypes, the job sheet keyed in by hand on Friday afternoon.
Below: the companies based here, the work left undone, how it works from Bussum including travel costs, what it costs and where it goes wrong. If your team works in English, so do we.
The kind of companies based in and around Amersfoort
Amersfoort is largely an office city. Around the station you find professional services: accountancy firms, consultancies and engineering practices, insurance, HR and staffing. There is a solid IT cluster too. On the older industrial estates to the west sits the other face of the city: wholesale, light manufacturing, construction and mechanical installation.
Outside the city the picture barely changes, only the scale does. Leusden, Nijkerk and Barneveld hold family businesses running for a generation or two: wholesalers, installation and construction firms, transport, and agricultural supply around Barneveld. Less start-up, more company-that-has-existed-for-thirty-years: worn-in processes and software added in layers.
The work that keeps piling up here
What we run into in this region is not exotic. It is work somebody has done by hand for years because there was never time to change it:
- Professional services: recognising and preparing incoming documents per client. Time recording reconstructed afterwards from calendars and email. A quote that lives in Word, then in the CRM, then again in the accounting package.
- IT and staffing: triaging and assigning incoming tickets. Matching requests against CVs. Monthly reports somebody stitches together from three systems.
- Construction and installation: job sheets keyed in by hand. Pulling material lists out of drawings. Tracking inspections and maintenance intervals in one person’s spreadsheet.
- Wholesale: orders arriving by email or PDF and typed in by hand. Supplier packing slips. Price lists in a new format every quarter.
- International sites in particular: the same figures re-entered into a group system in a different format, because the local package and head office never agreed on a data model.
In family businesses the knowledge sits in people’s heads
In this region we often work with companies where nothing is written down. The planner knows which customer you never schedule on a Friday. The back office knows that one supplier renames its article numbers every so often. That works fine while those people are there, and becomes a problem the moment you want to automate: a system cannot guess what an experienced colleague adds without thinking.
So the first part of our work is often not technical but tedious: writing down how it runs today, exceptions included. That takes time and produces nothing on the day. There is an upside — in a family business the decision-maker is usually in the same room.
No office in Amersfoort — how that works
We have no office in Amersfoort and no PO box pretending to be one. Ours is on Torenlaan in Bussum: roughly thirty kilometres down the A1, a short half hour outside rush hour. What that means in practice:
- A half-day (4 hours) core session is genuinely half a day. We do not have to leave early, stay over, or cut it short to get back.
- Travel costs are €0.45 per kilometre from Bussum — roughly €27 for a return trip to Amersfoort, slightly more for Leusden, Nijkerk or Barneveld. It is a separate line on the invoice.
- Dropping in during the build phase is realistic. An hour alongside the people who will use the new process costs us a morning, not a day.
- Rush hour is the one limitation. The A1 towards Amersfoort in the morning and back in the afternoon jams up, so we would rather schedule from half past nine or after two.
What it costs
Our rates are the same everywhere and do not change per client or per town. Only travel costs vary, and here they are low. All amounts exclude VAT.
The AI scan is free and takes five minutes online: a score, a few concrete opportunities and a first price indication. The core session on your shop floor is a half-day of 4 hours at €596, excluding travel costs; a full day is €1,192. Our advisory rate is €149 per hour. You then get a core report with priorities and a go or no-go per opportunity — yours to keep, even if you do nothing further with us.
Building is charged by the hour: €110 for straightforward work, €165 for complex development, with a fixed number of hours per month paid in advance, so there is no open-ended bill. We carry professional indemnity and general liability insurance, and a subsidy partner checks as standard whether a grant scheme applies. That is not a promise that money is available.
Where it goes wrong, and when you do not need us
Four causes come back every time, and none of them has anything to do with AI.
- No owner. Everyone finds it interesting, nobody is accountable, and it disappears behind the daily workload. By far the most common cause.
- Data that does not add up. At wholesalers here that is almost always the product data: three numbers for the same item, supplier files in four formats. Cleaning it up is dull manual work and often the bulk of the first weeks.
- Industry software that is closed. Construction, installation and wholesale packages do not always have an open API, or only release one on a pricier plan. We check that before anything gets built.
- The wrong first process. Invoicing, or the time recording payroll depends on, is tempting because that is where the hours are — but if something breaks there you pay for it in trust.
How to start
If you mainly want faster email or drafting text, you do not need an agency: a subscription and an afternoon of practice will get you further. If you already have an IT partner in Amersfoort who knows your systems, let them do it. We come in when several systems have to work together, or when something has to be built that does not exist yet.
- Take the free AI scan online. Five minutes, no sales pitch.
- A short intro call, by phone or online, to work out whether an on-site session makes sense. If it does not, we say so.
- Core session in Amersfoort or nearby: a half-day of 4 hours on your shop floor, €596 excluding VAT and travel costs. In English if that suits you.
- Core report with priorities and a go or no-go per opportunity. Yours to keep, even if you stop there.
- Build if you want to, with the same people who ran the session, from a monthly budget you set.
Frequently asked questions
Do you have an office in Amersfoort?
No. Our office is on Torenlaan in Bussum, and there is no PO box in Amersfoort pretending otherwise. We come to you: roughly thirty kilometres down the A1, a short half hour outside rush hour.
What do you charge in travel costs for Amersfoort?
Travel costs are €0.45 per kilometre from Bussum, which comes to roughly €27 for a return trip to Amersfoort and slightly more for Leusden, Nijkerk or Barneveld. It is a separate line on the invoice.
How quickly can you come over?
Quickly enough that distance is not an argument. We usually schedule the core session within a few weeks, and that timing depends more on your people’s diaries than on ours.
Can you work in English with our team?
Yes. Sessions, the core report and documentation can all be in English, which matters if your team or head office runs in English. On the shop floor we switch to Dutch where that gets better answers out of people.
Do you work in Leusden, Nijkerk and Barneveld as well?
Yes, same working area for us: the drive is a quarter of an hour longer and travel costs slightly higher, and nothing else changes. That is where most of the family businesses and wholesalers sit.
Our industry software has no integration. Can it still work?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and we find out before anything is built. Plenty of construction, installation and wholesale packages have no open API, or only release one on a pricier plan. The answer may be that another process goes first.
What we do here
Further reading
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Other regions
Start with the free AI scan
Five minutes online, no sales pitch: a score, concrete opportunities and a price indication. Based in Amersfoort or nearby and would rather talk it through first? Book an intro call.