AI consulting for a small business: what should you actually get?

What should an AI engagement deliver, start to finish?

A small business wants AI to cut the hours a weekly task eats. So judge the engagement by what is running at the end, and by what happens the month after.

In practice, it should cover five steps:

• Look at how you work: the tasks that keep coming back, the files and emails they rely on, the tools where they happen.
• Pick what's worth doing, and tell you where AI won't help.
• Install agents in your company, wired into your tools, that your teams use without changing their habits.
• Test them on real cases from your business, then fix what falls short.
• Keep them evolving as your files, teams and needs change.

A report or working agents: what difference does it make?

A report hands you a list of use cases and a roadmap. Then you have to find someone to build it, a budget, and a person on your side to run the project. In a company with no AI team, that's often where things stall.

An agent that runs can be judged within a few weeks. Your teams use it or they don't, its answers are right or they aren't, and you see what needs fixing. You decide whether to expand based on what you saw.

Consultant or developer: who should do the work?

A consultant understands your processes but doesn't always build what they recommend. A developer builds what's described to them and doesn't always know what should be described, so some of what you explained gets lost in the handoff.

At Saména, it's the same people: three engineers from Télécom Paris who specialize in AI and spent a year doing research in the school's lab. They look at how you work, then build your agents themselves.

What does working with Saména look like?

It starts with a free 30-minute discovery call, no commitment, with Ange or Xisco, two of the founders. You walk them through what eats your team's time: emails to sort, quotes to prepare, case files to put together, documents to track down.

You then grant access to your tools in two clicks, without sharing a password. Saména reads SharePoint, OneDrive or Dropbox in read-only mode, only in the folders you pick. Your email or business software can be connected too, as custom work.

Two weeks after the call, a first agent is running. It answers with its sources and drafts Word documents and PowerPoint decks, in the Saména app and also from Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot.

After that, you have a dedicated point of contact. Your agents keep evolving on one monthly subscription for the whole company, with unlimited users.

How do you choose an AI consultant?

Ask every provider these questions and compare the answers:

• Who builds the agents: the person who studied your processes, or a different team?
• What data do they work from, and do your files get copied somewhere else?
• What happens after delivery, when a folder or a team changes?
• Do you pay per user, or for the whole company?
• Can you start with one department and a first agent?

When is an AI engagement not worth it?

If your teams mostly want to write an email, summarize a memo or translate a text, a general assistant will do. The page "Is ChatGPT or Copilot enough for my company?" helps you decide.

An engagement pays off when the task depends on your own data: client files, past quotes, your methods, your email, none of which a generic tool knows.

What happens to your data?

Your files stay where they are. Saména keeps no copy, and what it retains from your documents is encrypted with a key unique to your company. Servers are in France, and the database is in the European Union.

You choose the model: Claude, models from OpenAI, or Mistral if you prefer a French model. It runs in Europe and keeps none of your data. Saména can also run on your own servers or on a dedicated instance, and everything is deleted on request.

Frequently asked

How much does working with Saména cost?

A setup fee based on the volume of your documents, then a monthly subscription for the whole company, priced on the agents built for you. We share numbers on the call. The page "How much does a custom AI agent cost for a small business?" explains the model.

Do we need an in-house AI team?

No. Saména's engineers build and adjust the agents. On your side, you need someone who knows the task and can say what's missing.

Where should we start?

With one department and one task that comes up often. The page "How to implement AI in a small business without a big project" explains how to pick it.

Is there public funding for AI consulting?

In France, yes. The government covers part of an AI assessment for small and midsize companies, the Diag Data IA, run by Bpifrance under the "Osez l'IA" plan. The page "Diag Data IA: France's subsidized AI assessment for SMBs" covers the terms.

Will our teams have to switch tools?

No. The agents live in the Saména app, and also inside Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot. People who already use one of these assistants keep it.