Investing in AI — why does business need expensive automation rather than cheap solutions?
Here's what we've noticed: most small and medium-sized businesses want to implement AI solutions, but they run into one significant barrier — the expectation that high-quality automation should be cheap. These entrepreneurs sincerely believe that small budgets will allow them to gain a serious competitive advantage by automating business processes. However, as practice shows, such expectations are not always met, and cheap solutions often result in significant problems.
The common opinion is:
Entrepreneurs usually believe: “It is enough to choose inexpensive public solutions or universal SaaS services, and the automation problem will be fully solved.” The market does offer a variety of budget solutions that promise to cover a wide range of tasks, from simple processing of incoming requests and generating reports to deeper analysis and even forecasting. Outwardly, it seems that such affordable products can fully cover all the needs of small and medium-sized businesses without significant investments.
We are often approached by companies that already have experience in implementing AI solutions, but have encountered serious blockers.
As an example, the experience of one of our clients. Before getting to know us, the company chose an affordable tool to automate application processing via WhatsApp, Telegram, and Instagram. At the initial stage, everything looked very optimistic: applications were successfully collected, reports were regularly generated, and customer acquisition rates began to grow. But after a month of work, it became obvious that serious problems had arisen. It turned out that automating one channel is only the first step, and effective work requires constant maintenance, analysis and improvement.
The company was faced with the need to monitor and adjust the quality of offers, adjust the tone of communication, and regularly introduce new promotions and offers based on an analysis of past dialogues. But the contractors who were supposed to provide support were not motivated, with budgets of $100-200 per month, to dive deep into these tasks. As a result, the customer was left with a defective solution that stopped developing and did not bring adequate efficiency.
Why this observation is important:
Ignorance or ignoring such a problem leads companies to serious losses. Businesses are actually stopping at the initial level of automation, missing out on important opportunities for further growth and scaling. Insufficient technical support and lack of detailed process configuration lead to a loss of competitiveness, and the potential benefits of AI implementation are not realized.
Many entrepreneurs do not realize that constant analytics, updates and the introduction of new solutions are critical stages of automation, without which it is impossible to achieve sustainable and long-term results.
Case example:
Our client faced serious difficulties when he tried to integrate the basic bot with his own CRM system, which is not popular among mass solutions like amoCRM or Bitrix24. Integrating such a system requires specialized API knowledge, web hooks, and the ability to understand complex technical documentation from third-party services. Soon, the company faced a new task: implementing an AI bot in the customer service, which was supposed not only to record and transfer data to CRM, but also actively interact with current user data: determine order status, order history, and provide personalized offers.
The initial budget solution was completely inadequate for these tasks, and the company needed a completely new approach. We offered our client the development of our own CRM system integrated with popular platforms such as 1C. This solution made it possible to automate almost all business processes: accounting, administrative functions and even sales forecasting. The business was able to analyze all important indicators in real time and make accurate decisions based on factual data, rather than on guesswork or intuition.
Moreover, after a bad experience with superficial implementations, it is becoming increasingly difficult for businesses to find a new team that can cope with tasks at the proper level. In this case, a bad start results in even higher costs — not only temporary, but also financial, since finding qualified specialists requires effort, budget and often urgent restructuring of the entire automation architecture. This is when companies realize how valuable a team with both strategic and technical thinking is that we are.
Key insight is that the introduction of AI automation should be considered not as a minor technical task, but as an important strategic mission that requires significant investments and an integrated approach. Attempts to minimize costs only lead to partial and unsatisfactory results.
The real solution for small and medium-sized businesses is to strategically invest in their own technology platforms and CRM systems integrated with powerful automation tools like n8n. Only such an approach will ensure deep, sustainable and effective automation of business processes that will help the company remain competitive and develop confidently in the long term.
We are not just contractors who limit ourselves to implementing solutions and stop there. We enter the business as a full-fledged external cloud AI department that implements a strategic and integrated approach to problem solving. This is how we realized that our positioning is not a one-size-fits-all SaaS for everyone, but a niche SaaS that is deeply integrated into specific industries.
To date, we have already successfully implemented such solutions in the construction company and the beauty industry.
Yes, we receive a lot of applications from small and medium-sized businesses seeking cheap solutions that cannot provide sustainable results. But ours main mission — niche support for SaaS solutions aimed at long-term cooperation and real results, rather than one-time implementations just for the sake of appearances.