AI advisory
Is AI actually worth it for a business our size?
For most businesses of thirty to two hundred people, the first year of value is drafting, summarising and finding things: real, but unglamorous. Sometimes it is not worth it yet, and we will say so.
Answered by Ryan Sanders, Partnership Director
The honest size of it
For a business your size, the realistic first-year return is hours back on writing, summarising, searching your own documents and cleaning up text. That is worth having. It is not a transformation, and anybody promising you one should be asked to put the number in the proposal where it can be checked later.
Where it is not the answer
Anything where a total has to be right. Anything that depends on a judgement your customers are paying you for. Anything that would need six months of integration work before the first person touches it. And anything at all, if your backups have never been tested or your staff are not on multi-factor authentication, because those are the things that end businesses and AI is not.
What a good first project looks like
Small, boring, owned by a named person, aimed at work that is currently done from scratch every time, run for six to eight weeks with a date on which somebody decides whether it stays. The best ones we have seen saved a department a morning a week and were never spoken about again, which is what success looks like.
Why we say this out loud
We are the ones who would be paid to build it. Telling you that half of what is being pitched to businesses your size is not worth the money is the part of the advice that is hard to get anywhere else.
If a vendor tells you your setup is fine, ask them to put it in writing. The answer changes once it has to be written.
The ERP under a desk Small businessSunk cost is real. A backup server you bought last year deserves a plan before it goes in a dumpster because a move made it convenient.
Server or cloud, honestlyPeople also ask
Which AI tools are our employees using right now?
Almost certainly more than leadership thinks. Between a staff survey, what is switched on by default in your tenant, and what your industry software has quietly added, we can establish a real starting point instead of an assumed clean one.
The full answerWhy are our technology costs going up if we are not using AI?
Because the security floor rose permanently, AI data centre demand is pushing up hardware, cloud and software pricing across the industry, and compliance now carries real documentation overhead. None of those require you to use AI.
The full answerWhat is AI advisory, and what do we actually get?
An assessment of where AI fits your business, which platforms are safe for your data, a written policy, training, and software when you need it. It runs as a program with a named advisor, not a one-off meeting, and a login to our advisory library comes with it.
The full answer
"Mike C. was spot on. Needed assistance setting up a software license with a third-party vendor. Mike was on time for the pre-arranged meeting and completed the install with no issues. After the install the vendor commented on how easy it went. Mike knew where everything needed to go and facilitated his end without flaw."
Jarad, HVAC contractorMeet Mike- A technician who knows your setup takes every request. Not a dispatcher, not a queue.
- Every closed ticket is surveyed and a partner reads every response.
- 99.5% of surveys come back positive.
- Family-owned since 2005. 21 years in the same corner of Wisconsin, not going anywhere.
"Another great job by Midwest IT. Our company just loves your fast response to our issues."
Client, 2024 surveyTalk to a partner, not a sales script.
Tell us what is going on. A partner will call you back the same business day, look at what you have, and tell you honestly whether we are the right fit. No pricing pressure, no pitch deck.