AI agents · Small businesses
For a small business, AI pays off when an agent takes one repeating workflow, such as quotes, supplier invoices or order-status questions, prepares the work and leaves the decision to you.
Discovery is a fixed fee, credited to your first months of monthly care
Where the time goes
Five places where owners and office managers spend their week, and what an agent could take off their desk.
Read the drawing, find a similar job, work it out, while the customer waits. A slow reply loses the job. An agent drafts the quote; you approve it.
There's no time to chase every open quote. An agent reminds the customer on time and records whether the job was won or lost, and why.
Calls and messages that break up the day. An agent answers from the job sheet and passes you only the orders that are running late.
Copying lines and checking them against the order, one by one. An agent extracts the lines, matches them to the order and asks you when something doesn't add up.
Calls and emails to 2–3 suppliers for every material order. An agent sends the requests and compares the answers; you decide.
Quoting
The agent reads the request and the drawing, finds similar past jobs, estimates material, setup and machine time from your rates, and drafts the quote. You approve, edit or reject it before anything is sent.
Illustrative walk-through
The owner, by hand, often in the evening
Control and privacy
Illustrative scenario, not a client project: a CNC machine shop doing turning and milling. This is how a quoting agent is built, and what it never does.
Around the quote itself, the agent can take on smaller workflows too: following up a quote that got no answer, with a record of whether the job was won and why; answering order-status questions from the job sheet; taking in supplier invoices against the order; and asking several suppliers for material prices, while you decide who to order from.
The framework is chosen per workflow, for example Dify for a simple document flow, or LangGraph for a longer flow with several stages. An agent can connect to, for example, email, Excel or Google Sheets, WhatsApp Business and your accounting software's API. These are examples of systems that can be connected, and feasibility is checked during Discovery.
Conceptech also builds machines and test stations and works with mechanical drawings, so we read a drawing the way production people do. Industrial automation and custom machines
Illustrative scenarios
Two scenarios based on common processes: a workflow built around one business, and a ready-made package that suits many similar businesses.
Illustrative example
Small CNC machine shop
Every request for a quote means reading a drawing, finding similar jobs and calculating, usually in the evening. A slow reply loses the job.
The aim: Quotes go out the same day instead of after several days, and no price is sent without approval
Typical plan: Growth
Illustrative exampleTemplated package
Café, single branch
The owner puts the supplier orders together at the end of a shift, from memory and scraps of paper.
The aim: Orders go out on time without an evening at the desk, with fewer shortages and less overstock
Typical plan: Templated package
Illustrative scenarios based on typical processes, not client projects.
More workflows
Any of these can be the first or the second workflow. In each one the agent prepares the work, and you approve what matters.
The agent extracts the lines, matches them to the order and delivery note, and drafts the entry. On a mismatch it stops and asks you.
After a period you set, the agent drafts a reminder to the customer and records whether the job was won, and why. You approve the wording.
The agent answers the customer from the job sheet, and passes you every order that's running late and every question about a new date.
The agent builds the material list, asks several suppliers and compares price and delivery date. You decide who to order from.
The agent classifies a new request, extracts the details and routes it to the right person with a draft reply for approval.
What fits
Sometimes a ready-made tool is enough, and then it's the better choice. This comparison helps you decide before you invest.
Often the answer is a mix: automation for the fixed parts, and an agent for the parts that need judgement. And if a ready-made tool is enough for you, we'll say so during Discovery.
Method
Five steps, each with a gate. In the first period nothing reaches a customer without you seeing it, and autonomy grows only on criteria we agreed in writing.
01
You start here
We map one process using 20–100 real examples, design the agent's flow and estimate the return on investment.
No agent yet
Gate: You decide whether to go ahead with setup
02
We measure how long each quote or invoice takes today, how many there are each week, the error rate and how long customers wait for an answer.
No agent yet
Gate: You approve the baseline and the targets
03
We build one flow at a time, in a test setup. Anything irreversible gets an approval step, and every action the agent takes is logged.
Agent drafts in a test setup
Gate: The agent passes the test set on real past jobs
04
The agent drafts quotes alongside you, but nothing is sent to a customer. Each draft is compared with the quote you actually sent, for a period set in the Discovery report.
Runs alongside your team, sends nothing
Gate: Written criteria, for example: at least 70% of drafts approved without edits, and zero critical errors
05
The agent drafts, sends after approval and follows up automatically, and you approve every price. Autonomy widens only while most drafts are approved without edits.
Agent acts; you approve key steps
Pricing
Per workflow, not by the hour: a fixed price for a defined result, agreed in writing up front.
Each workflow has a one-time setup and a fixed monthly care fee. Monthly care covers hosting and running the agent, monitoring, prompt and model updates, and small changes. You pay the language-model usage directly to the provider, on your own account, so you see every charge.
You get the fixed price for the workflow in writing after the Discovery, before any build work. The Discovery fee is credited toward your first months of monthly care if you go ahead with setup.
Discovery
A fixed-fee, fixed-scope first step: one process, one report you can act on, and the fee is credited toward your first months of monthly care if you continue.
Discovery is a fixed fee, credited to your first months of monthly care
Yes, when there's a workflow that repeats every week and has past examples, such as quotes or supplier invoices. You start with one workflow, not the whole business. The Discovery checks whether the workflow is worth an agent, and if a ready-made tool is enough, it says so.
In most cases, yes. Models that read images and documents extract material, dimensions, tolerances, finish and quantity from a drawing, and fields the agent isn't sure about are flagged for you to check. Discovery tests this on your real drawings, before you commit to setup.
You do. The agent drafts from your rates and similar past jobs, and shows how it reached every figure. No quote is sent until you've approved, edited or rejected it.
They don't have to leave your business at all: the agent can run on a local model on your own server. Where cloud models fit, we use them under terms that don't let the provider train on your data. We sign an NDA on request when the project calls for it.
No. An agent can connect to what you already use, such as email, Excel or Google Sheets, a shared folder, your accounting software's API or WhatsApp Business. These are examples, not a list of past projects, and feasibility for your systems is checked during Discovery.
The agent reads an invoice that arrives by email, extracts the lines and matches them to the order. When everything matches, it drafts the accounting entry. When the price, quantity or item differs, it stops and asks for your approval.
It's priced per workflow: a one-time setup plus monthly care, and you pay the model usage directly. The amount depends mainly on the number of systems, the state of your data and the approval flow, and it's set in writing after the Discovery.
It's common, and it doesn't stop you from starting. During Discovery, 50–100 past jobs are cleaned up: what was asked, what was quoted and what was won. They serve the agent as its reference set, and serve us as the test set before go-live.
Tell us which workflow takes most of your time. An engineer will reply, and we'll check together whether it suits an agent. The Discovery fee is credited toward your monthly care.
Usually a reply within 3 working hours, by email or phone