Count on three levels:
- off-the-shelf tools such as ChatGPT or Claude: from around €25 per person per month
- unlocking your own knowledge and first automations: €3,000 to €5,000, two to six weeks
- custom work that operates independently inside your systems: the sky is the limit
Nine out of ten SMEs should be starting at level one or two. Plenty of providers will offer you level three straight away.
Level 1
Existing tools (€25 to €30 per person per month). Faster writing, summarising, searching, translating. ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot, plus proper training and one working session on what may and may not be done with company data. Without that training you are mostly buying noise. Done in days. Anyone offering you a build project for this is charging you for something you can arrange yourself in an afternoon.
Level 2
Unlocking your knowledge and first automations (€3,000 to €5,000, two to six weeks). For companies where the value is locked in documents: contracts, manuals, old quotes. Think of a trading company where the sales desk digs through emails and folders for old price agreements before every quote. A secure connection between those documents and an AI model solves that: a manageable build, not a platform. Agree the KPIs up front here too, and you will know within a few weeks what it delivers.
Level 3
AI that performs work inside your systems (custom). A process that independently carries out steps across multiple systems. More expensive and riskier, so you do this only once levels one and two have already paid for themselves.
The order matters more than the budget: the most expensive failed AI project in the SME world is buying level three while the problem sat at level one.