AI agency Amsterdam: automating the work you already do
Search for an AI agency in Amsterdam and you get a long list. What it rarely tells you is who comes to watch your work before anything gets built — and that decides whether AI automation in Amsterdam earns anything or just costs money.
We are an AI company based in Bussum and we work in and around Amsterdam a lot. We put AI into existing business processes: orders, invoices, job sheets, email, and connections between systems that currently ignore each other. Chatbots are not our product.
To be clear from the start: we have no office in Amsterdam. No desk on the Zuidas, no address on a canal. We drive over from Bussum and charge travel costs per kilometre. Below is what that means in practice and what it costs.
The kinds of companies you find in Amsterdam
Amsterdam has no single dominant industry, and that matters for this work. One street holds a wholesaler with a warehouse outside the ring road, the next a twelve-person agency billing by the hour. Roughly four groups:
- Professional services: accountants, law firms, consultancies, financial service providers. Heavy document flows, a lot of manual checking.
- Wholesale and e-commerce: a webshop or a B2B order flow, often with the warehouse outside the city and the office inside it.
- Creative and marketing agencies: project work, separate tools side by side, time tracking that runs behind, quotes rebuilt by hand every time.
- Installation and construction firms working in and around the city: engineers on site, job sheets that do not talk to the back office, planning by phone.
The work that sits undone
The question is never “can AI do this”. The question is which piece of work comes back every week, is done by a person, and calls for no judgement.
In professional services that is the inbound flow: documents arriving by email, read, matched to a file and passed to the right colleague. Half a day a week, and no client pays for it.
In wholesale and e-commerce it is order handling: orders keyed in by hand, supplier confirmations retyped. During a peak that is exactly the work that creates the backlog. At agencies it is the admin around the work: hours filled in from memory on a Friday, quotes rebuilt from scratch.
At installation and construction firms it is the job sheet. The engineer hands it in, someone in the office retypes it, and invoicing runs a week behind. Amsterdam adds a twist: travel time between jobs here is unpredictable, so planning that does not move with reality costs more.
English-speaking teams and systems that do not talk
Amsterdam has many companies with an international team, where the working language is English and the bookkeeping is Dutch. That creates two problems we meet here more often than elsewhere.
The first is language inside the process. Incoming email and documents in two or three languages, while the accounting package, the Chamber of Commerce data and the VAT rules are Dutch. An automation that ignores that falls over on the first English invoice.
The second is the toolkit. International companies run international software; the Dutch administration runs on a Dutch package. Those two do not talk, and there is a person in the middle typing across the gap. We usually close that gap first, because the gain shows straight away. Work and documentation come in English or Dutch.
Coming in from Bussum: how it works in practice
Our office is at Torenlaan 5B in Bussum. The A1 puts you at the edge of Amsterdam in half an hour. The real work starts there: the last five kilometres in this city can take as long as the first twenty-five.
So we will say it plainly: we have no office in Amsterdam. What we do instead is come to you, and we do it often — Amsterdam is a normal working day for us.
- Travel time: around 30 minutes to the edge of the city. For the centre or an address inside the ring road, add time depending on the hour.
- We avoid rush hour. A core session starts better at half past nine than at eight; that saves us both standing still.
- Travel costs: €0.45 per kilometre from Bussum, roughly €25 for a return trip. Parking is charged at cost, itemised on the invoice. Near a station or metro stop we often come by public transport instead.
- Short catch-ups during the build are done by video call. A half-day (4 hours) on the shop floor has to happen in person; a progress update does not.
What it costs
Our rates are the same in Amsterdam as in Bussum. Only the travel costs differ.
- AI scan: free, online, five minutes. A score, a few concrete opportunities and a first price indication. No sales call.
- Core session on your shop floor: a half-day (4 hours), €596 excluding VAT and travel costs. A full day is €1,192; our advisory rate is €149 per hour.
- Building: €110 per hour for straightforward work, €165 for complex development. Paid monthly in advance from a budget you set, so there is no open end.
- Travel costs: €0.45 per kilometre from Bussum, plus parking at cost.
Where it goes wrong
Four things come back every time. None of them are about AI, and three sit on your side of the table.
- No owner. In a busy company, “interesting” is not enough. Without someone with the authority to decide, the project disappears behind the daily workload. By far the most common cause.
- Data that does not add up. The same client twice, addresses in a free text field, three codes for one product. Cleaning that up is dull manual work and often the bulk of the first weeks.
- A supplier who keeps the door shut. Some packages have no open API, or only release one in a pricier subscription. We check that before building.
- The wrong first process. Invoicing is tempting, but if something breaks there you pay for it in trust. Pick something where a mistake is visible and fixable.
Why an agency from outside the city
There is a good reason to pick an agency inside Amsterdam: you can cycle over. If that is decisive, we are not the right party.
What you do get: the same people who do the research also build the thing. There is no handover between consultant and developer, because that is where half the context disappears. Fixed hourly rates and hours paid in advance, so you know what a month costs.
We carry professional indemnity and general liability insurance, and a subsidy partner checks as standard whether a scheme exists for your project. If the core session shows a package you already own does the job, we will say so.
How to start
Start with the free AI scan: five minutes online, no strings. It tells you whether a conversation is worth it.
If the answer is yes, we book the core session: a half-day (4 hours) at your place in Amsterdam, €596 excluding VAT and travel costs. We follow one or two processes end to end and talk to the people doing the work. 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.
Frequently asked questions
Do you have an office in Amsterdam?
No. Our office is at Torenlaan 5B in Bussum. We have no branch in Amsterdam and will not pretend otherwise. We come to you: the A1 puts us at the edge of the city in about half an hour, plus extra time depending on your address.
What do you charge in travel costs for Amsterdam?
Travel costs are €0.45 per kilometre from Bussum, roughly €25 for a return trip. Parking is charged at cost and appears itemised on the invoice. If your address is near a station or metro stop, we often come by public transport instead.
How often do you come over during a project?
The core session always happens in person: a half-day on your shop floor, because you cannot see a process through a screen. During the build we work mostly remotely and come over when there is something to see or test. That saves you travel costs.
Do you work with English-speaking teams?
Yes. Sessions, documentation and working instructions come in English or Dutch. The combination of international software with a Dutch accounting package is something we meet often in Amsterdam, and it is usually where the first gain sits.
What does it cost to start?
The AI scan is free. The core session is a half-day (4 hours) and costs €596 excluding VAT and travel costs; a full day is €1,192. After that you only pay for what you have built, at €110 or €165 per hour.
When should we not start this at all?
If nobody can explain how a process currently runs, writing it down is the next step, not automating it. If you only want to write email and text faster, you do not need an agency. And if your package already has an AI feature nobody uses, switch that on first.
What we do here
Further reading
Most businesses start with the tool and then get stuck. It is better to start with one piece of work that comes back eve…
The build costs are usually the easiest part of the bill. The surprises are in the clean-up beforehand, the monthly usag…
AI only becomes useful once it can reach your own data. What an integration is, the four ways to get at your data, and w…
Other regions
Start with the free AI scan
Five minutes online, no sales call: you get a score, concrete opportunities and an indication of price. Based in Amsterdam and would rather talk first? Book an intro call and we will work out whether a core session on your shop floor makes sense.