You are looking for help with AI and you come across three kinds of providers. The AI consultant, who helps you think it through and advises. The AI agency, which advises and builds. And the party that only builds what you ask for, without asking whether it is the right thing. They all call themselves roughly the same, so you have to work out for yourself what you are bringing in.
What an AI consultant does
A consultant takes a look with you, maps out where the opportunities are and delivers advice. Usually billed by the hour or by the half-day. That is useful if you have no direction yet, if there is internal disagreement about where to start, or if you need to substantiate an investment decision for a bank or a shareholder.
The pitfall is well known: you get a well-founded document that nobody does anything with afterwards. Not because the advice is bad, but because there is no party executing it and because in the daily rush nobody frees up time for it.
What an AI agency does
An AI agency does the analysis and the execution. That saves a handover, and that handover is exactly where projects stall. The downside is that the party giving the advice has an interest in something being built. That need not be a problem, but you have to know it and ask about it.
We are such an agency, so read this with that in mind. Our own countermeasure: after the core session on your shop floor, our conclusion can be that you don’t need to automate anything, or that an existing package serves you better than custom-built work. We say so when that is the case, and it costs us the job.
How to choose
- Do you already know which process you want to tackle, and is it about integrations or custom-built work? Then you need a party that builds, not an adviser.
- Not sure yet and want direction first? Then buy a half-day of advice or an exploratory session, not a whole programme straight away.
- Do you need to substantiate an investment for third parties? Then independent advice from someone who doesn’t build is cleaner.
- Torn between two parties? Ask both for an example of a project that went wrong and what they changed as a result. Whoever has no answer to that hasn’t built enough.
What to look for, whoever you choose
- Are you talking to the people who do the work, or only to an account manager?
- Do you get a fixed price or a range with a cap, or an open hourly arrangement with no ceiling?
- Who owns the code and the documentation when it is finished, and is that on paper?
- Does it run on standard technology that someone else can maintain too, or only on something of their own?
- What happens if it doesn’t work? Ask for the agreement, not the promise.
An adviser who knows after two conversations which product you need probably already has that product on the shelf. Keep asking.
What it costs
Advice is usually charged per hour or per half-day, building work per hour or per project. We charge €149 per hour for the on-site core session (a half-day of four hours is €596, excluding VAT and travel costs) and €110 to €165 per hour for development, depending on how complex the work is. What other parties charge we don’t know exactly; ask, and compare what you get for it, not just the rate.