Plain-English guide
What does an AI consultant actually do?
"AI consultant" covers everything from a strategy deck at £2,000 a day to someone who quietly automates your worst hour before lunch. The difference is whether working software exists at the end. Here is what the useful version of the job looks like — and how to spot the other kind.
By Matt Rooney · 23/08/2026 · T19 Digital
The useful version of the job
Sit inside the business and watch how work actually moves, not how the org chart says it does. Find where hours leak — the retyping, the chasing, the out-of-hours enquiries. Rank the opportunities by hours saved against effort to build, with honest reds where AI is the wrong answer. Then build the winners as small, sharp tools wired into what you already use, train the team in plain English, and measure the result in hours, not vibes.
The red flags
A deliverable that is only a deck. Vendor commissions hiding behind "recommendations". Per-seat licences that quietly multiply. Anyone who says "adopt AI" without naming the Tuesday-afternoon task it fixes. And consultants who have never shipped AI in production themselves — advice about water from people who have never been swimming.
When to hire one, honestly
When repetitive admin is eating hours you can name; when you have tried an off-the-shelf AI tool and bent your process around it; when the team is curious but nobody owns the question. Do not hire one to "have an AI strategy" — hire one to get specific hours back, and make the engagement small enough to be safe: ours starts with one paid discovery day, and you keep the ranked shortlist even if nothing gets built.
What it costs with us
The discovery day is the wedge; build rounds run two to six weeks each, from £4,200 up to £11,900–£16,800 for work right across a business. Every tool runs in your own accounts, your data is never used to train anything, and if we would not run it inside our own four products we do not ship it to you.
Questions we get on this
How is an AI consultant different from a software developer?
The consultant’s job is choosing the right tool and proving the payback; the developer’s is building it. We do both, which keeps the advice honest — we have to live with our own recommendations.
What should an AI consultancy engagement cost a small business?
A focused engagement should start in four figures, not five. Ours run from £4,200 with a paid discovery day first — a small, safe way to find out what is actually worth building.
What do we get if the answer is "AI won’t help"?
The shortlist says so in writing, with the reasons. Honest reds are half the value — they stop you spending on the wrong thing, which is the most expensive AI mistake going.
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