AI consulting for small businesses: what it includes, what it costs and how to choose

AI consulting for a small business should help you decide which tasks in your company are worth automating, with which tools and how much time you would save, and, if it makes sense, put it into practice. A good consultancy ends with something working in your email, ERP or CRM, not just a report. At balderas.studio, in the Valencian Community (Spain), we start with a free 30-minute diagnosis and a written pre-diagnosis.

What is AI consulting for small businesses?

It is the work before automating: someone looks at how your company runs, finds the repetitive tasks an AI agent can take over and tells you which ones pay off. "Pay off" means they save more than they cost.

A small business does not need an 80-page digital transformation strategy. It needs to know whether moving orders into the ERP, sorting invoices or answering repeated emails can be done with AI, how many hours that frees up and what it costs.

What should it include?

• A conversation about your day to day: who does what, with which programs and where time is lost.
• A short list of candidate processes, ranked by hours saved and by how easy they are. Three well-chosen ones beat twenty ideas.
• An hours estimate for each process, presented as an estimate and not a promise.
• A price and a timeline, including what the monthly fee covers.
• The limits: what the agent does alone and what it asks you first (for example, you approve the doubtful cases from your phone).
• Which data and connections are needed: email, ERP, CRM, WhatsApp, invoicing.

How much does it cost?

It depends on whether you pay only for the analysis or for the set-up too. As a reference, these are our launch prices, excluding VAT:

• Diagnosis: 30 minutes plus a written pre-diagnosis, free.
• One agent for one process (for example, email orders into the ERP): from €990 and €149/month.
• A team of agents for several departments: from €2,900 and €290/month.
• Personal assistant (email, diary, reminders): from €190 and €39/month.
• Custom software: €60/hour or a fixed quote.

The final price always comes in a fixed quote after a first conversation. Launch prices are for the first clients, in exchange for being able to share their case.

How do you know if it pays off?

Do a simple sum. If one person spends 20 hours a month on a repetitive task and an hour of their time costs €20, that is €400 a month. An agent that takes it over pays for itself in a few months. If the task takes 2 hours a month, it probably does not pay off, and nobody should tell you otherwise.

How do you choose an AI consultant?

Five useful questions before you hire:

1. What exactly will you do and what do I get at the end? If the answer is "a report", ask what it costs to put it into practice.
2. Can I see something working? We show our own system, which runs the balderas.studio business. We explain it in Claude for business: how to connect it to your CRM, email and ERP with MCP.
3. Which programs does it connect to? An agent with no link to your tools does not save time.
4. Who has the final say? Agents should ask for approval on important things and keep a record of what they do.
5. What happens afterwards? Maintenance, adjustments and a monthly report of hours saved.

Consulting, tools like n8n, or a custom agent?

It depends on the process. If it is a fixed rule (when A happens, do B), an automation tool is usually enough. If something has to be read, interpreted and decided, like an order in a PDF or an email with a question, you need an agent. We explain it in n8n, Make or a custom AI agent.

What if I do not know where to start?

Start by telling us which task takes up most of your time. We will prepare a free pre-diagnosis: what we would automate, how many hours it would save and what it would cost. If it does not pay off, we will say so. You can read more first in AI agents for business and in which processes a small business can automate, or request your pre-diagnosis.