Experience+

AI implementation for small business

AI your people
actually use.

Most businesses have bought a subscription and hoped. This is the other thing: a short, fixed-scope engagement that takes two or three jobs your team repeats every week, gets them running properly, writes down the rules, and trains the people who have to live with it.

AssessPilotRoll outTrainFour phases, scoped and agreed before anything starts.

What this is

What implementation
actually means.

Buying a licence is not implementation. Implementation is choosing one piece of work your business repeats — a quote, an intake, a site report, a follow-up email — and rebuilding how it gets done: the tool wired in, the prompts written and saved, the checks agreed, and the person who does that job trained on the new version of it.

That is the entire engagement. It ends with two or three things working, not with a strategy document. What stays behind is a written readiness assessment, a tool selection with the reasoning attached, the implemented workflows themselves, operating guidelines for staff, and the training.

Drafting documents

Proposals, letters, reports, job write-ups — first drafts built from your own templates and past work.

Quoting and estimating

Turning site notes, photos or a phone call into a priced quote in the format you already send.

Customer intake

Taking an enquiry and turning it into a complete record, including the questions people forget to ask.

Scheduling and follow-up

Booking, confirming, rescheduling, and the chaser messages that currently go out late or not at all.

Summarising calls

Notes, decisions and actions written up and filed where the next person will go looking for them.

Reading long documents

Contracts, specifications, supplier terms — pulled apart into the parts that affect what you do next.

The common approach to adopting AI compared with this implementation engagement
AspectBuy tools and hopeThis engagement
Starts withA tool someone saw demonstratedThe jobs your business repeats most often
The decisionWhich subscription to buyWhich work is worth changing — and which should be left alone
Who is involvedWhoever volunteeredThe people who do the work every day
What shipsLogins for everyoneTwo or three workflows running inside the business
The rulesUnwritten. Everyone guesses.Written guidelines: what goes in, what never does, who checks the output
TrainingA link to a help pageSessions with your staff on the workflows they will actually use
When it endsUsage quietly drops offYou keep the assessment, the guidelines and the trained people

None of this depends on a particular vendor. If the right answer for a job turns out to be a spreadsheet and a checklist, the assessment will say so.

Who it is for

Businesses where the same
jobs come round every week.

Roughly five to two hundred people. Enough repeated work to be worth changing, not enough spare time to work out which of the forty tools being pitched at you is worth the money.

Professional services

Accountants, solicitors, consultancies, agencies. The billable hour disappears into engagement letters, client onboarding, research summaries, meeting notes and the third rewrite of a proposal. Most of that is drafting against a strict house format — the kind of work that responds well to being set up properly once.

What gets delivered

  • Drafting set up on your own templates and past documents
  • Written rules for what client information may be put where
  • A shortlist of tools with the reasoning, so you can decline the rest
  • Training for the people who bill by the hour, not only the partners

Trades and field service

Plumbing, electrical, HVAC, landscaping, small builders. The work happens on site; the admin happens at the kitchen table at nine at night. Quoting from a scribbled measurement, writing up a job, chasing an unpaid invoice, and answering the phone when everyone who could answer it is up a ladder.

What gets delivered

  • Quotes built from site notes and photos, in your pricing format
  • Enquiries captured properly while the whole team is out on jobs
  • Job write-ups and reports done without an evening at the laptop
  • Training that works on a phone, for staff who are rarely at a desk

Clinics and practices

Dental, physiotherapy, veterinary, allied health, small private practice. Reminders and recalls, intake forms, letters back to referrers, tidying notes between patients. This is also the setting where the boundary matters most: some of this work should stay off any external tool, and deciding which parts is part of the job.

What gets delivered

  • A clear line drawn around patient information before anything is switched on
  • Referral letters and correspondence drafted from your own formats
  • Reminders, recalls and intake handled without more front-desk hours
  • Written guidelines the team can point to when they are unsure

Small retail and e-commerce

Independent shops and small online stores. Hundreds of product descriptions nobody has time to write, the same twelve customer questions every day, returns to triage, suppliers to chase, and a listing that has been half-finished since spring.

What gets delivered

  • Product copy and listings drafted in your voice, at volume
  • Customer email and returns sorted before a person picks them up
  • Supplier and stock correspondence handled from a set format
  • One person trained to run it, so it does not stall when they are away

If you already have a data team and an internal AI roadmap, this is not the right engagement — you need specialists, not a starting point. And if nobody inside the business has time to sit in the sessions, the work will not hold once it is handed over. That is worth saying before a call rather than after one.

What you keep

Six things you own at the end

A fixed scope with a finish line. These are the artefacts that stay with the business when the engagement closes — documents you can reread, workflows that keep running, and people who know how to use them without us.

  • 01

    A written readiness assessment

    Where your work actually happens now, which parts of it are repetitive enough to be worth automating, and which are not. Written down, in your language, so you can hand it to someone else.

  • 02

    A tool selection, with the reasoning

    Which tools we chose and why, and — the part usually left out — which we looked at and rejected, with the reason for each. You can audit the decision later, or reverse it.

  • 03

    Two or three working workflows

    Built, connected to your real systems, and running on real work before we leave. Not prototypes and not a list of things you could build.

  • 04

    Written operating guidelines

    What staff may put into these tools and what they may not: client data, contracts, personnel files, anything under an agreement. Plain rules, short enough that people read them.

  • 05

    Hands-on staff training

    Sessions with the people who will use the workflows, on the workflows themselves, using their own tasks. They practise while we are in the room to correct them.

  • 06

    A review once it is live

    A short session after the work has been in daily use: what stuck, what people quietly stopped using, and what to fix. Then the engagement is finished.

The list above is the whole engagement. If something you need is missing from it, say so on the call and we will scope it in before we start — not discover it halfway through.

How the work runs

Four phases, in order, then it ends

Assess, pilot, roll out, train. Each phase produces something the next one depends on, so you can see the work advancing rather than continuing. There is no retainer waiting at the end of it.

  1. Phase 1 of 4Before anything is bought

    Assess

    We sit with the people doing the work and follow what they actually do, step by step, including the parts that never made it into a process document. That produces the written readiness assessment, and a shortlist of tools with the reasoning for each choice and each rejection.

    • Work observed first-hand
    • Readiness assessment
    • Tool shortlist
    • Rejections written down
  2. Phase 2 of 4One team, real work

    Pilot

    We build the first workflow with a single team and run it on live work, not a test case. If it does not hold up in daily use, it gets rebuilt or dropped here — while the change is cheap and only one team has to unlearn it.

    • First workflow built
    • Connected to real systems
    • Run on live work
    • Kept or dropped on evidence
  3. Phase 3 of 4Once the pilot holds

    Roll out

    The workflows that survived the pilot go out to everyone who needs them, with the remaining one or two built alongside. Access, accounts and permissions get set up properly, and the written operating guidelines land before people start using the tools, not after.

    • Remaining workflows built
    • Accounts and access set up
    • Operating guidelines issued
    • Handover documentation
  4. Phase 4 of 4The last phase, then a review

    Train

    Hands-on sessions with the staff who will use the workflows, on their own tasks, with us in the room to correct them. A short review follows once the work has been in daily use, covering what stuck and what quietly did not. After that the engagement is closed.

    • Hands-on sessions
    • Guidelines walked through
    • Review after go-live
    • Engagement closed

Durations are agreed before the first phase starts and written into the scope. The engagement has a defined end, and the review in phase four is where it reaches it.

The deliverable

What the assessment looks like

The first phase ends with a written assessment. Below is a condensed sample of one, built around two businesses that do not exist. The companies are invented. The shape of the document — findings, severity, observation, recommendation, one workflow written out before and after, and a list of what we would leave alone — is what you receive.

Fictional accounting practice · 11 staff · two partners

Harlow & Pike is an invented eleven-person accounting practice doing bookkeeping, payroll and year-end work for small businesses. Its sample assessment shows the pattern common to professional services: the AI use has already started, informally, and nobody has written down what is allowed.

Findings

Fictional sample — the format you’ll receive
  1. Client data in consumer toolsSeverity: High

    Three staff paste client bank statements and trial balances into a free consumer chatbot to summarise them. They are doing it on personal logins because the practice has no account. Nobody told them to; nobody told them not to.

    Recommendation. Open a business account with training on submitted data switched off, move the existing use onto it, and write one page stating which client data may be entered and which may not. Do this before anything else on this list.

  2. Record of which tool holds whatSeverity: High

    No inventory exists. Four active subscriptions were found on partner cards during the assessment, two with AI features enabled by default and neither reviewed since sign-up.

    Recommendation. Build a one-page register: tool, who owns it, what client data it holds, whether AI features are on, when it renews. Review it at renewal rather than annually.

  3. Repeat client questionsSeverity: Medium

    The same twenty-odd questions arrive by email every January — which records to send, how to log mileage, when payments fall due. Each is answered from scratch by whoever opens it, and the answers differ.

    Recommendation. Write the answers once as a short client handbook, then draft replies against that handbook. The handbook is the deliverable; the drafting is what it makes possible.

  4. Year-end lettersSeverity: Medium

    Each letter is rebuilt by copying last year’s file for a similar client and editing it. Wording has drifted apart across the client list, so partners re-read every letter in full before it goes out.

    Recommendation. One approved template with the variable parts marked. Partner review continues, but becomes a check of figures and exceptions rather than a rewrite of the prose.

  5. Uneven staff confidenceSeverity: Low

    Two staff use assistants daily and are ahead of any guidance the practice has given. Three avoid them entirely, having been told to be careful and nothing further.

    Recommendation. One shared training session and one written guideline, so both groups are working from the same rules instead of their own.

Answering a client records query in January

One workflow, written out end to end

Trigger: A client emails asking what to send for their year end.

How it runs now
  1. 1Whoever opens the inbox first reads the email and tries to remember which service the client is on.
  2. 2They search old sent mail for a similar reply, find one from a different service tier, and start editing it.
  3. 3They ask a partner to confirm a detail; the partner is with a client, so the email waits.
  4. 4The reply goes out that afternoon, worded differently from the one another member of staff sent yesterday.
How it runs after
  1. 1The client handbook holds one approved answer per service tier, written and agreed once.
  2. 2The assistant drafts the reply from the handbook and the client’s record, using the answer for that tier.
  3. 3Staff read the draft, correct anything specific to the client, and send it.
  4. 4Anything the handbook does not cover is flagged to a partner as an exception, which is also how the handbook grows.

A person still reads every reply before it is sent. The change is what they are doing — checking a draft against a client, rather than composing from memory.

What we would not automate here

Named in the assessment, so the scope of the work is clear before it starts.

  • Advice on a client’s specific circumstances. That is the practice’s work and its liability.
  • The final review of anything filed. Someone signs it, and the signature has to mean they read it.
  • The first call with a client in difficulty.
  • Anything where being wrong is expensive and hard to notice.

Harlow & Pike and Calder Plumbing & Heating are fictional. They are written to show the format and the judgement, and nothing above describes a real business or its results. Your assessment is written from your tools, your workflows and conversations with your staff.

Book a call

The engagement

What is included, and what is not

One fixed scope, four phases, a defined end. The second list is the more useful one: a scope is only believable once you can see where it stops.

Included

  • A written readiness assessment: how the work gets done now, and where a tool would actually help.
  • A tool selection with the reasoning written down, including what was ruled out and why.
  • Two or three workflows implemented in the systems you already use.
  • Written operating guidelines your staff can follow when nobody is supervising them.
  • Training for the people whose daily work changes, run on your own workflows.
  • A handover document listing every change made, every account created, and how to undo it.

Not included

  • Custom software

    Tools that already exist get configured and connected. Nobody builds you an application you then have to maintain.

  • Ongoing operation

    The engagement ends at handover. It is not a retainer, and nothing is left running that only we know how to run.

  • Large-scale data cleanup

    If your records are spread across twelve spreadsheets, the assessment will say so plainly. Fixing that is separate work with its own scope.

  • Decisions about headcount

    Who you hire or keep is yours to decide. It is not a conclusion an outside consultant should be handing you.

  • Legal or regulatory sign-off

    Where a rule looks like it applies to your industry, it gets flagged. What it means for you is a question for your lawyer.

  • A promise about savings

    What was implemented and how the work changed can be shown. What that is worth in your business is a number only you can put a figure on.

What you provide

  • One person who can decide

    Someone able to approve a tool and, more importantly, say no to one. Pilots stall when every choice goes to a committee.

  • Access to the systems being changed

    Email, documents, whichever system holds your customers. Read-only first wherever that is enough. If you would rather not grant access, changes get handed over as instructions your own people apply.

  • Time from the staff doing the work

    A few hours across the engagement from the people whose jobs change. They are the ones being trained, so it cannot happen around them.

  • Straight answers in the assessment

    Including about what is not working now. A polite assessment produces a useless tool selection.

How it ends

  • Accounts, credentials and subscriptions are in your name from the start, not transferred at the end.
  • The guidelines and handover document are yours to edit, share, and use for training people hired later.
  • After the pilot there is a decision point. If the pilot has not earned its place, that gets said out loud and the roll out stops there.
  • If you want more work later, it is scoped and agreed separately. Nothing renews on its own.

Start with a call

The call covers what your people are already doing with AI, which of the four phases you actually need, and whether this is a fit. If it is not a fit, you will hear that on the call rather than in a proposal a week later.

Book a discovery call
A writing desk by a window in a plain workspace
Ryan H, who runs Experience+.

Who does the work

The approach, stated plainly

Experience+ is run by Ryan H. Rather than list a background you have no way to verify from a landing page, here is how the work is actually conducted, which is the part you can hold anyone to.

The common failure in small and medium businesses is not that the technology is too weak. It is that nobody has decided who is allowed to use which tool, on which information, for which task. Staff fill that gap themselves, quietly, with whatever chatbot is open in another tab. Adoption is mostly an operations question wearing a technology costume, and it is answered with decisions, training and written rules rather than with a better model.

So the engagement is deliberately small and deliberately finished. A few workflows, running where your work already happens, with the people who use them trained on them and guidelines they can point at when a new situation comes up.

  • Implementation, not advice

    A recommendation costs nothing to write and nothing to ignore. The engagement is judged on whether two or three things are working in your business at the end of it, which is a much harder thing to fake.

  • Your systems, not a demonstration

    Work happens in the tools your staff already open every morning. A workflow that only runs in a clean demo account has not been implemented; it has been performed.

  • Two things finished beats twenty considered

    Most small businesses do not need an AI strategy. They need the quoting process to stop taking a full afternoon. Narrow scope is what makes the work finishable, and finished work is what people keep using.

  • Written down so it outlives the engagement

    Guidelines, reasoning and handover notes are part of the deliverable, not a courtesy. If the knowledge lives only in the head of whoever set it up, you have bought a dependency rather than a capability.

  • Clear about what the tools cannot do

    These systems are confidently wrong on a regular basis, and some tasks in your business should not be handed to them at all. Saying which ones is part of the job. A pilot that gets stopped is a result too.

Details

Questions worth asking first

The objections below are the ones that come up on nearly every call. Where the honest answer is a limitation, it is written as one.