What does AI consulting cost for a small business?

Procora prices one defined task by agreement

Procora does not publish a fixed fee or standard turnaround for individual AI consulting. We agree the workflow, meeting format, deliverables, price and schedule in writing before starting. Submitting a request neither starts a subscription nor accepts a paid engagement.

Make the initial proposal comparable with other options: what is reviewed, who participates, what you receive and when the work is complete. Ask for included activities and exclusions. A low monthly software subscription is not the combined cost of consulting, development and maintenance.

What determines an AI consultant's fee?

The number of systems, sources and decisions often matters more than report length. A workflow with one approved document and a responsible employee differs from one spanning an inbox, calendar and accounting system. Access to each system needs its own assessment.

Poor source quality, unclear responsibility and many exceptions can increase discovery work. Bound the first engagement to one task with a known problem. If the information is not ready, a manual process improvement and a prerequisites list may be the right deliverable instead of an AI pilot.

Three tasks that need different proposals

These examples illustrate scope, not fixed packages or price estimates. Price and delivery are agreed in each case. A proposed integration does not establish that Procora already supports it.

• Customer enquiries: review one contact journey, required information and human handover. Output: process map, approved sources and test checklist. Software setup is agreed separately.
• Quotation follow-up: map status, ownership and a draft for the next contact. Any Procora pilot is scoped separately; an advisory report does not activate customer messaging.
• Administrative handover: identify duplicate work and missing approvals between staff. Output: owners, data requirements and a prioritised next step. Invoice sending, bookkeeping and payment verification are not included as a finished automation.

Separate one-off and recurring costs

Ask for a breakdown covering consulting, implementation or setup, licences, model and channel usage, ongoing operation and staff review and maintenance. Record what triggers additional work. An integration may have separate supplier terms and costs.

Compare proposals over the same period, currency and tax basis. Confirm whether amounts include or exclude VAT and have applicable tax stated separately in the proposal. Procora's software prices and an individual advisory proposal are different agreements; a software price must not be read as a fixed consulting fee.

When can the work be worthwhile?

Measure relevant task volume and current effort first. Subtract the time people still spend reviewing, correcting and updating. Value released capacity using your own assumptions. An hour of reduced administration is not automatically a wage saving or an extra sale.

Use our existing workload calculator for low, base and high scenarios with your own costs. It exports a CSV worksheet. All starting values are fictional; a modelled surplus is a scenario, not a measured result or a Procora quotation.

How to get a useful proposal

Describe one recurring task, its owner, system names, approximate volume and desired improvement. Bring an anonymised example and identify decisions that must always remain with a person. Do not send passwords or sensitive customer records in the initial request.

Agree change handling and completion: who approves the deliverable, what remains unresolved, who owns the next step and how it is checked. If a pilot is recommended, agree its own scope and costs before anything goes live.