Where to start with AI in a Monaco business
The first AI project in a small Monaco company should be one task, chosen by the hours it costs, built in the tools you have, with a person approving what leaves. How to find that task in 30 minutes, and what to avoid.
Every week a Monaco director asks us some version of “where do we start?”. The honest answer is shorter than the question: with the task you do at 7 pm.
Not with a strategy
The first mistake is to start with a strategy document, a committee or a platform. A company of nine people does not need an AI strategy; it needs one repetitive task to stop costing an hour a day. The strategy, if you want one later, writes itself from what the first three automations taught you.
Find the task in 30 minutes
Ask the person who does the work, not the person who manages it, three questions. What did you do last week that you have done a hundred times? What did you wait for, and from whom? What question do people keep asking you? The answers point to the same two or three tasks every time: answering the same enquiries, writing quotes, re-typing orders into a tool, chasing invoices, preparing the weekly numbers. Pick the one with the most hours behind it and the clearest rules.
Build it where the work already lives
The second mistake is a new tool. If the task happens in Outlook and Excel, the automation should happen in Outlook and Excel. Your team should not have to learn anything; they should notice that the drafts are waiting and the spreadsheet is already filled. Every tool a small company adds is a tool somebody stops using in March.
Keep a person on the send button
Start with drafts, not with autonomy. The assistant reads, prepares, proposes; a person approves in one tap. After a month you will know which kinds of message it never gets wrong, and you can let those go out on their own if you want. Starting the other way round is how companies end up with a story about the robot that promised a client something.
Prototype before you build
Two weeks on last month’s real emails or invoices tells you more than any proposal. You see the drafts, the log, the cases it got wrong, and you decide on evidence with a fixed price in hand. If it does not work, you have lost two weeks and learned something true about your data. That is the whole method, and it is why the first automation is usually live within a month.
Two questions.
What if we have no idea which task?
That is what the free quick-check is for: 30 minutes with the person who does the work, and a written note with the two or three tasks within two days.
Should we start with ChatGPT licences for everyone?
Only with rules about what may be pasted in. Licences help people draft by hand; they do not take a task off anyone’s plate. A half-day training does more than a licence.
Related.
AI audit in Monaco
Before anyone builds anything, you should know which tasks are worth automating, in what order, and what each would give back. That is the audit. It comes in two sizes, and both end with a document you keep.
AI for a small business in Monaco
The average private employer in Monaco has nine employees. In a team that size there is no one to delegate the repetitive work to, which is exactly why AI pays back faster here than in a large company.
How we work
Small steps, each one paid back before the next: a free 30-minute quick-check, a two-week prototype on your real data, a build into your tools, then we run it and count the hours. Fixed prices per step, code you own, one person accountable.
Start with a 30-minute call. Keep what it finds.
You tell us where the hours go. We tell you which two or three tasks to automate first, in a short written note. Free, in English or French.