AI consulting for Hilton Head Island and Bluffton companies
A clear read on where AI earns money in a local business, and where it burns it.
AA19 produces a ranked map of where AI pays off in one specific business and where it will fail. Built for owners tired of guessing at tools. Week two delivers the ranked opportunity map, and the first pilot gets scoped by week four, usually as an AI workflow implementation.
The problem for a local owner
The pitch volume around AI has gotten absurd. A landscaping company in Okatie fields cold calls promising autonomous sales, autonomous scheduling, and autonomous everything. Pricing ranges from 79 dollars a month to six figures. None of the pitches start with the business.
An owner making a decision has no neutral read on which claims survive contact with a 14-truck operation, a seasonal labor pool, and a customer base that prefers phone calls to portals.
What gets built
AA19 consulting produces a decision document, not a slide deck. The work starts with a two-week operational read: call volume, job flow, quote-to-close rates, admin hours, software stack, and the specific tasks eating owner time.
- A ranked opportunity map scored on hours recovered, revenue impact, and implementation risk
- A do-not-build list naming the pitches that fail for a company of this size and shape
- A sequencing plan covering the first six months, with dependencies made explicit
- Vendor evaluation against a scorecard covering memory, oversight, failure handling, and exit cost
- A budget model comparing build, rent, and stay-manual across three years
What the first 30 days look like
Week 1
Discovery
Interviews with the owner, the office, and the field, plus a review of the tools, data, and decisions that consume the week.
Week 2
First working version live
The ranked opportunity map is delivered: where AI pays off, what it costs to build, and which workflows it will fail inside.
Weeks 3-4
First pilot scoped
The top opportunity turns into a scoped pilot with a defined success measure, an approval path, and a fixed price.
What it connects to
Findings map onto the systems already running the company. A recommendation to automate quoting names the exact rate card, the software holding it, and the person approving exceptions today.
Consulting output feeds directly into implementation work through AI workflow implementation and operational systems setup, so the analysis has somewhere to land.
Three ways to solve this
Do it yourself
- Upfront effort
- Evenings and weekends spent wiring tools together and testing AI evaluation.
- Monthly cost profile
- Owner time, plus a subscription fee for every tool in the stack.
- Who maintains it
- The owner, and changes wait for a free evening.
- What happens when the season gets busy
- AI evaluation slips first, since billable work wins the day.
Hire an agency or extra admin
- Upfront effort
- Discovery calls, onboarding documents, and steady direction from someone on staff.
- Monthly cost profile
- $2-5k+ retainers, or a salary plus payroll cost for an added admin.
- Who maintains it
- The agency, on their queue and their timeline.
- What happens when the season gets busy
- Turnaround depends on the retainer tier and the account manager's queue.
AA19 build
- Upfront effort
- A scoped build handled by AA19, with a few hours of owner input during discovery.
- Monthly cost profile
- Scoped build, then light maintenance.
- Who maintains it
- AA19 maintains the build, and the setup is documented so the business owns it.
- What happens when the season gets busy
- The system runs at the same pace, since nothing depends on a free hour.
Proof
[PROOF: short anonymized outcome with one real number - to be supplied]
What changes after
Decisions get faster and cheaper. An owner armed with a ranked map stops evaluating vendors emotionally and starts evaluating against a written standard.
Several engagements end with a recommendation to automate less than the owner expected. Cutting two bad projects pays for the consulting outright.
Questions about ai consulting
How long does an AI consulting engagement run?
Two to three weeks for the operational read and the written plan. Longer engagements exist for companies running multiple locations or brands.
Does AA19 recommend its own platform?
Sometimes. The scorecard covers alternatives honestly, including staying with current software and changing process alone.
Is this useful for a company with fewer than ten employees?
Yes. Smaller teams see clearer results from sequencing since a single wrong build consumes a large share of the annual technology budget.
What does the engagement require from the owner?
Around four hours across two weeks: an operations walkthrough, access to reporting, and one review session on the draft findings.
Can the plan be implemented by an internal team?
The document is written to be executable by any competent implementer, internal or external. Vendor lock-in defeats the purpose.
What does this cost?
Every build is scoped to the business, sized to the systems already in place. A short consultation produces a fixed-price proposal before any work starts, no retainers required to get an answer.
Related services
Services hub
All AA19 services
Closely related
Business Operations Consulting
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