What does AI actually cost a business?

It is hard to get a straight answer to this question because most of the people answering it are selling something. Here are the numbers as they really look for an Icelandic business with five to fifty staff.

Three cost lines

Why setup is the biggest line

The technology itself is cheap. What costs money is working out which jobs are worth automating, connecting the systems you already have, writing the right instructions and teaching people to use it.

It is also the line people try to save on, and that is where projects die. A system nobody knows how to use is pure cost.

How to work out whether it pays

1. Pick one narrow job that someone does regularly.
2. Measure how long it takes today, in hours per month.
3. Multiply by a real hourly rate, not the minimum wage.
4. Compare that against setup cost plus twelve months of running it.
5. If it does not pay for itself in twelve months, pick a different job.

Three projects that almost always pay off

• Answering common enquiries, whether in chat or by email.
• Drafting text that someone has to review anyway: quotes, descriptions, social posts.
• Copying data between systems, which is the most tedious and most error prone job in any workplace.

Three that rarely do

• Jobs that happen once a month and take twenty minutes.
• Decisions where a mistake is expensive and a person has to check everything anyway.
• Jobs nobody has ever written down, because then you are automating chaos.

The start we recommend

One project, measured over four weeks, with a real number at the end. If the number is good you take the next project. If it is bad you have spent little and learned a lot. That is why our AI consulting starts with an assessment and not with a system.

Frequently asked questions