Straight answers on AI automation
The questions that come up before every automation project, answered in the first paragraph. No gated PDFs, no lead form in the middle of a sentence.
How much does AI automation cost?
A first automated workflow starts around $5,000 for a small or mid-sized business and rises with the number of systems it touches. Diagnostics should cost you nothing. Enterprise transformation programmes from large consultancies are a different market — six and seven figures. If a vendor will not price a first project, the scope is not defined yet.
How long does AI automation take to implement?
A first automated workflow should reach production in 2-4 weeks. Longer usually means discovery is being sold as a phase rather than done in days. Large transformation programmes genuinely take quarters, but you should not need one to automate your first process — and you should not fund one before seeing a single working result.
AI automation vs RPA: what is the difference?
RPA follows rules you write: it clicks, copies, and moves data along a fixed path, and it breaks when the path changes. AI automation handles judgement — reading an unstructured email, classifying it, deciding where it goes. Most real systems use both: RPA for the deterministic steps, AI for the ones needing interpretation.
How to choose an AI automation agency
Judge on three things: whether they will show ROI before you sign, whether they name a date for the first working process, and whether the result gets handed to your team. Case studies with numbers beat logo walls. If the first deliverable is a strategy document, you are buying consulting, not automation.
What are the alternatives to big consulting for AI?
Four: a boutique automation consultancy, a specialist agency in your sector, a software house, or an in-house hire. The trade is scale and governance for speed and price. If your problem is one process rather than an organisation-wide programme, the big-consulting shape is usually the wrong purchase — not the wrong vendor.