An AI strategy consultant who stays for the build

If your leadership team keeps circling the AI question, a short written plan will help more than another subscription. As an AI strategy consultant, we help owners of small and medium-sized businesses decide where AI should go, where it should not, who owns it and how you will know it worked. Then we help you build the first piece, so the plan gets used. We work from Derry with businesses across Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland. The first call is free and takes 15 minutes. Our AI audit, which produces the plan, has a fixed price of £750.

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When to hire an AI strategy consultant

You do not need a strategy to fix one slow task. For that, see our page for small businesses. A strategy earns its cost when the questions cross departments. Typical signs:

• Staff use ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot, and nobody has agreed what data can go in.
• Sales, finance and operations each want a different tool.
• A board, lender or investor has asked for your AI plan.
• A pilot ran, nobody measured it, and it quietly stopped.
• A supplier is pitching an AI agent and you cannot judge it.

What a useful AI strategy answers

An AI strategy is a short, working plan for where AI will add value in your business. We build it around seven questions:

1. Why are we using AI at all?
2. Which business problems matter most?
3. Which uses are worth trying first?
4. What data, systems and people do they need?
5. What will we not use AI for?
6. Who owns delivery and decisions?
7. How will we measure the result?

If your plan cannot answer those, it is a wish list. A good strategy is short enough to read in one sitting: a summary, a ranked table of uses, the rules, a near-term plan and the measures.

How we rank where AI goes first

A useful way to compare candidates is to score them on four factors.

• Value. Hours back each week, quicker answers for customers, fewer mistakes to put right, clearer figures for managers.
• Effort. Data quality, system access, process clarity, training and integration.
• Risk. Harm to customers, privacy, regulation, reputation and unreliable output.
• Readiness. Is the process written down? Can the data be reached? Will someone own it?

High value and low effort goes first. High value and high effort becomes a planned project. Low value and low effort makes a good training exercise. Low value and high effort waits.

Good first candidates are familiar jobs where a person checks the output: meeting summaries, enquiry triage, first drafts of proposals and tenders, internal knowledge search and document classification. We are slower to recommend fully automated customer decisions, unreviewed HR screening, pricing with no oversight, or messages sent without approval.

A custom machine learning model is rarely the right first step. It may be worthwhile when there is suitable data, a repeated prediction problem and enough value to cover development and maintenance. For many admin and workflow jobs, tools such as Microsoft 365 Copilot, ChatGPT or Claude are enough.

The business case: your numbers, not market statistics

A business case should not rest on industry surveys or a vendor’s claim about hours saved. Build it from your own process:

• a baseline you can check, including hidden work such as rechecking and chasing missing details;
• how often the task happens and how much staff time it takes;
• the full cost: licences, integration, security review, training, internal time, monitoring and support;
• a simpler option without AI, so the decision is a real comparison;
• ranges rather than single figures where the evidence is thin.

Use your own figures to estimate possible time and cost savings, and record where those estimates still need a pilot to test them. A good business case ends with a clear choice: a controlled pilot, more discovery, or stop. Stopping is a valid answer.

Governance: the part leadership cannot hand off

Leadership needs to own the purpose, access rules and decisions for an AI project. The ICO’s AI accountability and governance guidance explains why responsibility cannot simply be handed to the technical team.

If personal data is involved, assess the data protection risks before rollout. A data protection impact assessment may be required, depending on the processing and its risks. Your data protection lead should make and record that decision using current guidance. A purchased AI subscription does not resolve it.

For a wider self-check, see the government’s AI Management Essentials guidance. Treat it as a prompt for better management, not proof that a particular system is compliant. Start with our AI policy template for staff rules. Businesses operating in the Republic should also see AI consultants in Ireland.

What our AI consulting services include

Our AI consulting services cover the plan, the build, the training and the upkeep. Every price below comes from our rate card.

Software and licence costs are extra. Prices are in sterling, and your quote confirms VAT. The plan is yours, whoever builds it. Not sure you are ready? Try our AI readiness assessment.

How an engagement runs

1. Free call. Tell us what is slowing the business down and who owns the work.
2. Audit. Process review, stakeholder conversations and analysis. We agree the timetable in writing first.
3. The plan. The first workflow to tackle, expected value, likely risks, quick wins, and whether the next step is training, automation or a larger project.
4. First pilot. We agree the outcome and delivery days, build and test with the people who will use it, then train and hand over. See our AI implementation services.
5. Support, if you want it. Your team gets the documentation and training to run what we build. If you would rather not, managed AI covers monitoring, fixes and improvements to the agreed workflows.

Examples of our work

Our case studies distinguish advice, training, implementation and software delivery. When comparing suppliers, look for work relevant to the task you need and ask how its results were measured. A website project, a training session and a completed automation are different kinds of evidence.

Choosing an AI consultancy in the UK: six questions to ask

Put these to every supplier on your shortlist, including us. A good answer names your systems, your people and your numbers. A vague one is a warning sign.

1. What would you look at in the first 30 days, and who on our team would you need?
2. What would make you advise us not to go ahead?
3. How will we know, in numbers, whether the first piece worked?
4. Who checks AI output before it reaches a customer?
5. Can you work with our existing tools and IT provider?
6. What do we own when you finish?

Our answers to the last three: review points are agreed before anything goes live; we work with whoever owns your systems; you keep the plan and the documentation, and your team is trained to run what we build.

Who runs Blue Canvas

Blue Canvas AI Ltd (company number NI737502) is registered in Northern Ireland. Phil Patterson, our founder and director, came to AI from business development and venture capital. Since 2022 he has helped teams adopt AI with a clear business case. Davy Anthony, our AI implementation consultant, builds AI systems that fit the tools you already use. Meet the whole team.

Most of our work is remote, and in-person sessions are agreed before work starts. For local detail, see AI consultancy in Northern Ireland. We are independent: naming a tool does not mean its maker endorses us.

Talk to an AI strategy consultant for 15 minutes

Bring the one AI decision that keeps getting pushed to next month. In a free 15-minute call we will tell you whether it needs a strategy, an audit or one simple fix, and what a sensible first step would cost.

Book a free 15-minute call

FAQ

What does an AI strategy consultant do?

An AI strategy consultant helps leaders decide where AI is worth using, in what order, under what rules and with what measures. We do that through a fixed-price AI audit that ends in a ranked, written plan. If you want us to, we then help you build and test the first piece.

How much does AI strategy consulting cost?

With us, the first 15-minute call is free. The AI audit, which produces the written plan, has a fixed price of £750 and does not commit you to anything else. Builds and training are quoted after we agree a written scope. Managed AI starts at £250 a month, plus a one-off setup fee from £1,750. Software and licence costs are separate.

How long does an AI strategy take?

We agree the timetable in writing before work starts, so you know the dates before you commit.

Do we need an AI strategy before we start using AI?

Not for one task. If you have one slow job, fix that first. A strategy is worth it when several teams want different tools, staff are using AI without agreed rules, or someone senior has asked for a plan.

Will you tell us if AI is not the right answer?

Yes. If AI is not the right fit, we will say so. Sometimes a simpler automation or a clearer process is the better fix, and a good business case always compares the AI option with one that does not use AI.

Can we take the plan to another supplier?

Yes. The plan is yours. You can use it with Blue Canvas, give it to your own team or take it to another supplier.