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AI & automation

Do more with fewer hours.

Strategic for boards. Practical for SMEs, associations and support offices.

Most AI engagements run aground at the same point: they demand behaviour change. Everyone has to learn something new, everyone has to remember to do it, and after six weeks nobody does. I build it the other way round. Systems that take over the routine while your team simply does its work.

The test every block has to pass: if nobody in the organisation changes their behaviour, does this block still save hours? Whatever fails that test is not on the menu.

Book a call Which block fits us?
Two tracks

Two different questions, two different tables.

A board that wants to know where AI pays off in this business needs something different from a twelve-person office drowning in recurring work. I do both, but not at the same table.

Track A · Strategic

AI course for the board

AI gets discussed at board level and nothing happens, or everything gets tried and nothing keeps running. Both cost money. What is missing is a judgement.

  • Where in your value chain AI pays off, and where it is expensive toys
  • What it costs per year, calculated into licences and hours, not into promises
  • What exposure you carry on vendor dependency, GDPR and liability
  • What you tell the board or shareholder, and what you cannot yet stand behind
  • One recommendation with a sequence, plus what you deliberately do not do

As a standalone engagement of 1 to 3 weeks, or inside a running fractional track. Indicative €4,000 to €9,000.

Track B · Practical

Building blocks that give hours back

For organisations of roughly ten to fifty people: professional services, associations, support offices. Fixed scope, fixed indicative price, delivered with a one-page work instruction.

  • Six blocks, each with its own problem and its own promise
  • Fixed price per block, no hourly billing
  • What is out of scope is stated as plainly as what is in
  • Built tool-independent: if the AI drops away, roughly half the value stays
  • The system never deletes files. Only moves, with a log

€1,250 to €1,500 per block. System check up front €450.

Block finder

Six blocks is a lot. Start here.

Two questions. No email address, no form. You immediately see which block is likely to return the most for you, and why.

Question 1 · What eats the most time right now?

Pick whatever comes closest.

Question 2 · Is your file structure in order?

An honest answer pays off most here.

The menu

Six building blocks. Fixed scope, fixed indicative price.

Block 1 is the starting point for most organisations. Not as a sales trick, but because the rest leans on it: you cannot file a document automatically without a structure, and you cannot build a knowledge base on a swamp.

Block 1 · starting point

Order in the archive

Five people hunt for files every day. There are seven versions of the same document and nobody knows which is the latest. If the secretary drops out, nobody knows where anything is.

One folder structure, every existing file sorted into it, and a check that puts new files in the right place every working day and renames them to your own convention.

€1,500 indicative12 to 14 hours

Block 2

Documents at the push of a button

Every document starts by opening an old one and scrubbing out the previous client's name. A proposal takes ninety minutes, ten of which are actual thinking.

The five documents you produce most often come out in your own brand style after a few questions. Factually correct, because they draw on your own files.

€1,500 indicative10 to 12 hours

Block 3

Recurring work runs itself

The same chore every month. Compile the overview, update the log, check the backup, clean the member list. Two hours of work nobody gets smarter from.

Three recurring chores run automatically and deliver the result to your inbox or the right folder. If something fails you get an alert, not silence.

€1,500 indicative10 to 14 hours

Block 4

Meetings produce their own output

Someone takes notes, writes them up at home, and three days later the minutes circulate. The action list is a separate document nobody maintains after two meetings.

From recording or notes to minutes, action list and filing within ten minutes, in your own format. The action list updates itself across meetings.

€1,250 indicative8 to 10 hours

Block 5

The organisation's memory

Knowledge sits in heads and in scattered documents. A new board member starts at zero and spends three months asking questions of someone who is too busy.

One place where you ask a question and get an answer based on your own documents, with a source reference. Plus the list of knowledge that is not written down anywhere.

€1,500 indicative10 to 14 hours

Block 6

The inbound flow sorts itself

Everything arrives in one place and someone has to work through it by hand. Mail, sign-ups, forms, invoices, member questions. Read, judge, forward, file. Every day again.

Incoming items are classified, summarised and filed in the right place. Once a day you get an overview of what came in and what was done with it.

€1,500 indicative12 to 16 hours

Indicative prices exclude VAT. They apply per block, within the scope boundaries we establish in the system check, and exclude the licence cost of your own AI subscription. Travel time beyond an agreed radius is stated separately. Aftercare €80 an hour remote, €100 an hour on site.

How it runs

Look first, price second, build third.

A fixed price on an unknown environment is a gamble. For you and for me. That is why the system check comes first.

01

System check · €450

Half a day on site. I look at your environment, state what can and cannot be done, and deliver an assessment of which block makes sense first.

Credited against the first block if you commission within thirty days. If it turns out this does not fit, I say so, and for €450 you have bought an honest answer.

02

Kick-off

On site, usually two hours. We fix the structure, conventions and boundaries on a single page. After that it is clear what will and will not be built.

03

Build

Remote, six to twelve hours depending on the block. Anything that touches files runs seven days in trial mode first, with a log, before it goes live.

04

Handover

On site, with the people who will use it. One page of work instructions, a runbook for when it breaks, and an email alert so silent failures do not stay silent for months.

05

After

Thirty days of warranty that it works as delivered. After that, aftercare at rate, per started half hour. No subscription, no retainer, no admin.

Done is done, and what “done” means is written down.

Boundaries

What I rule out up front, so you do not discover it later.

Never delete. Every block that touches files only moves them. Quarantine folder, log, seven days of trial running. That is written into the agreement.

A data processing agreement where required. Member records and client files are personal data. Where I touch that data, we sign a processing agreement as an annex to the engagement.

No closed systems. If a system only works through custom integration or has no export, that task drops out and we pick another. I establish that in the system check, before the proposal.

No brand design, no system migration. I do not design logos and I do not move you from Dropbox to SharePoint. If no usable brand style exists, that is a separate track or a referral.

No autonomous replies. The system sorts and summarises. A human decides. Anything the system cannot place goes to one folder, not into oblivion.

Frequently asked

What organisations ask first.

What does AI automation cost for an SME?
Each building block carries a fixed indicative price of €1,250 to €1,500, excluding VAT and excluding the licence cost of your own AI subscription. The system check up front costs €450 and is credited against the first block if you commission within thirty days. Aftercare €80 an hour remote, €100 an hour on site. No subscription and no retainer.
Which block do we start with?
Almost always block 1. The other blocks lean on it: you cannot file a document automatically without a structure, and you cannot build a knowledge base on a swamp. If the structure is already there, another block can go first. The block finder above gives you a first answer in two questions.
What happens if we later stop paying for the AI subscription?
Every block is built so that roughly half the value survives without the AI. The folder structure and naming convention are valuable in themselves, the clean-up task is a script rather than a prompt, and the brand template works in Word regardless. That is deliberate: you do not become dependent on a vendor you have no influence over.
Who pays for the AI licence, and why not you?
The client buys their own licence. That is the right call on data ownership and liability: your data stays in your environment and in your contract. I calculate the annual cost for you in the system check, so there is no surprise later.
Does the system delete files?
Never. Only moves. Duplicates and old versions go to a quarantine folder, there is a log of every action, and the system runs seven days in trial mode before it goes live. That is written into the agreement.
Where does the automation run, and what if the machine is off?
Exactly why the system check exists. If a scheduled task runs on a laptop that shuts down at night, “every working day” is an empty promise. In that case we either pick an always-on environment or word the promise differently. I tell you up front which of the two it will be.
What is the difference with an AI agency?
An agency sells capacity and keeps you moving. I deliver a bounded system with an end date and then leave. That is commercially worse for me and cheaper for you. For the strategic track the same holds as in my commercial work: you get a judgement, not a process.

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Thirty minutes. One question: where does your time go?

You describe where the work gets stuck. I tell you which block makes sense, which does not, and whether a system check is worth it. No prep needed.

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