AI Consulting for Small Business
A fixed-scope AI Opportunity Session from $1,500 and your first working automation from $5,000. Honest advice, sized for businesses without an in-house dev team.
Companies we've collaborated with
AI Help Sized for Small Businesses
What is AI consulting for small business?
AI consulting for small business means finding the two or three places AI actually pays off in your operation, then building the first one, at a price that doesn’t require a committee. A half-day session, a written roadmap, and honest advice that sometimes says “don’t buy anything yet.”
How the Small Business Engagement Works
AI Opportunity Session
A half-day working session with the owner or ops lead, then a written roadmap about a week later: two or three credible AI candidates, a build-or-don't-build call on each, and honest cost ranges. From $1,500.
First Workflow Build
We implement the single highest-value item from your roadmap, wired into the tools you already use. From $5,000, most between $5,000 and $12,000, delivered in weeks.
What We'll Talk You Out Of
Platform migrations you don't need, "AI transformation" retainers, and custom builds where a $30-a-month subscription does the job. Telling you what not to buy is part of the service.
A Path That Grows With You
If a project outgrows this scope, it moves onto our full AI consulting ladder: assessment, pilot, production. Same team, and the session tells you honestly which track you're on.
What small businesses automate first
The same handful of things, in most businesses we have sat with. None of them are glamorous, and that is the point: each one is bounded, repetitive, and measurable, which is exactly the shape of work where automation pays for itself quickly and fails safely. The exotic projects can come later, funded by the boring wins.
What's in the roadmap document
One page per candidate, three candidates at most. It is short deliberately: a document you can read in fifteen minutes and act on, with anyone, is worth more than a fifty-page strategy deck you will never open twice.
Off-the-shelf, or something custom?
A $30 subscription is enough
- Drafting, summarising, and answering questions from documents
- One person, prompting it themselves, when they need it
- Roughly an hour of setup and no engineering
Custom work earns its keep
- The automation has to move data between your specific systems
- It has to run without a person prompting it
- It has to follow business rules a general tool does not know
Six months in, and where it goes next
The pattern we see when it works: the first workflow runs quietly and saves a few hours a week. The team starts trusting it, then starts pointing at the next candidate themselves, because now they know what automatable work looks like. Some businesses stop there; the session and one workflow paid for themselves.
Others outgrow it. When the ambitions get bigger (custom agents, systems in production, evaluation infrastructure) that work runs on our full AI consulting and development ladder, from assessment to pilot to production, including AI agent development. Same team, bigger scope. We do not push either path: the work earns the next step or it does not.
Why SLIDEFACTORY?
Because the advice comes from operators, not slideware. We run our own AI products in production, including CodeRaven, our AI code-review platform, and we publish the data, including what it costs to run. We’ve been building software in Portland since 2018, we’re members of the Gresham Area Chamber, and most of our client base is small companies and startups across the metro. We’re deliberately unromantic about tools: sometimes the answer is a $30-a-month off-the-shelf subscription, and we’ll say so.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How much does AI consulting cost for a small business?
Sometimes no, and we’ll tell you when that’s the answer. Most small-business owners we talk to aren’t skeptical about AI; they’re confused by it. Vendors are pitching, competitors claim they’re “using AI,” and it’s genuinely hard to tell which parts apply to a business your size.
That confusion is the problem we actually solve. Not “digital transformation,” just clear answers: where AI would pay off in your specific operation, what it would cost, and which of the pitches you’ve heard are worth ignoring. Some of our sessions end with “you don’t need AI for this, here’s the cheaper fix.” We count those as wins.
How long does it take?
The session roadmap is delivered about a week after we meet. A First Workflow build is measured in weeks, not months. If someone quotes a small business a six-month AI project, ask exactly what ships in month one.
Do we need custom AI, or will off-the-shelf tools do?
Often off-the-shelf is the honest answer, and we’ll say so. The roadmap distinguishes between “subscribe to this,” “connect these tools,” and “this one is worth building.” You only pay us to build when building is actually the right call.
Will this replace our staff?
In our experience running AI systems ourselves: no. The wins for small businesses are absorbing repetitive work (data entry, follow-ups, first-draft paperwork) so the people you have get their hours back. Judgment stays human.
Do you only work with Portland businesses?
We’re based in Southeast Portland and most of our small-business work is across the metro, from Gresham to Hillsboro to Vancouver. Remote engagements work fine too; the session runs just as well over a video call.
What is the AI Opportunity Session?
A fixed-scope working session, from $1,500, with a written roadmap delivered about a week later.
We spend a half day with you (the owner or ops lead, not a committee) walking through how the business actually runs: where the hours go, what gets retyped, what waits on somebody’s inbox. From that we identify two or three credible AI or automation candidates and put them in a short written roadmap: what each one is, a build-or-don’t-build call, and an honest cost range. No fifty-page deck. You can take the roadmap and act on it with anyone, including nobody.
What happens after the session?
If the roadmap points at something worth building, the next step is the First Workflow: we implement the single highest-value item, from $5,000, with most landing between $5,000 and $12,000. It’s built into the tools you already use, delivered in weeks, not months, and scoped so you can see the payoff without betting the quarter on it.
One workflow, done properly, beats five started. That’s the whole design.
