AI services · Beacon
Your week is full of jobs that shouldn't need you.
Not the work you're actually good at. The stuff around it. The quotes. The chasing. The same email for the ninth time. The spreadsheet somebody has to check by hand because it has to be right. We build the thing that does those jobs.
Start here
Count the hours first. The software comes after.
Every one of these conversations starts the same way, and it isn't about AI. It's you telling us what your week actually looks like. So do that bit now.
Tick the jobs that eat your time. Change the hours to whatever's true for you.
Your week
17
hours a week
782 hours a year
that's 104 working days
At £25 an hour of your time, that's £19,550 a year.
Based on 46 working weeks and a 7.5 hour day. Your numbers, not ours.
That number is the one we price against. Not our hours. Yours.
The obvious question, answered honestly
If ChatGPT is as far as you've got, you're further along than you think.
Most people we talk to have used ChatGPT, found it genuinely useful once or twice, and stopped. That isn't a failure of yours. It's the ceiling of the thing.
Here's what's past it, without the jargon.
01
It forgets.
Every conversation starts from nothing. You explain your business, your customers and how you write, over and over. What we build already knows all of that, and keeps knowing it next Tuesday.
02
It isn't connected to anything.
Your email, your calendar, your spreadsheets, your customer list, your files: all outside the box. You are the integration. What we build reaches them itself.
03
Nothing repeats.
The good prompt somebody wrote in March is gone. Every person in your business does it a slightly different way. What we build does the same job the same way every time, and you can see what it did.
And if you've gone further than that, the usual next stop is a pile of subscriptions. A chatbot, a note-taker, a transcriber, something for social. Four bills on the card and still not one full day given back, because none of them know your business and none of them talk to each other.
That's the same problem wearing a better coat. The fix isn't a fifth tool. It's one system that knows how you work.
Tell us what your week looks like. We'll tell you what can come off it.
Three things, in the order they usually happen.
None of it needs you to understand AI. It needs you to know which jobs you hate.
01
A system that knows your business
Most AI is a blank box that forgets you the moment you close it. This isn't. We set up a system that holds your business: how you work, what you sell, who your customers are, what you've already told it.
Then it does real jobs. Drafts the emails in your words. Writes the quote. Chases the thing you forgot. Turns an hour of meeting into the four actions that came out of it.
02
Bespoke automation for the jobs only you have
Every business has one job that eats a week and exists nowhere else. Pension valuations. Funding reports. A quoting process with eleven steps that live in one person's head.
That's the interesting work, and it's usually where the biggest number is.
03
Enough training that it sticks
A system nobody uses is a cost. We show you and your people how to actually use it, and we stay reachable while it beds in.
The bit nobody else will tell you
We keep AI out of anything that has to be right.
The actuaries in the job below produce numbers that have to reconcile to the penny, and be auditable afterwards. So the tool we built for them is local JavaScript. It runs on their machine, offline, and there is no AI anywhere near the numbers.
That was a deliberate choice, made with them. They'd been offered a custom app and turned it down because, in their director's words, it "feels like a black box." They can check our version at every stage. They sign it off. They can see exactly what it did.
AI is very good at drafting, summarising, sorting and chasing. It is not good at being the only thing standing between you and a wrong figure. We build to that line, and we'll tell you where it falls in your business.
Proof, not promises
Here's a real job.
We've taken their name off it. Everything else is as it happened.
Twenty of those fifty hours were people checking other people's sums. That's the sort of thing we go looking for first.
What would your ticket say?
- Client
- A firm of pension actuaries, Belfast
- The job
- Automate a valuation that ran on spreadsheets and hand-checking
- Before
- About 50 hours per scheme. 30 building it. 20 checking it
- How
- Local. Offline. No AI anywhere near the numbers
- Why that way
- It has to reconcile to the penny, and they have to be able to audit it
- Status
- Approach signed off. Rolling out in stages
You'll know the number before we start.
We price against the hours the job costs you, not the hours it costs us. So the conversation is about your week, not our rate card. Never hourly, and never a number that arrives after the work.
Book a callAlmost nothing, and definitely not a project.
- One conversation. Half an hour. You tell us what your week looks like.
- A look at the slow thing. Whatever the job is, we want to watch it happen once.
- Somebody who cares that it works. Usually you. Sometimes the person who currently does the job.
You don't need an IT department, a budget cycle, or a view on which AI model is best. That's ours to worry about.
Half an hour. If AI can't help you yet, we'll say so.
Questions we get asked.
Do I need to understand AI?
No, and you probably understand more than you give yourself credit for. What you need to know is which jobs you'd hand over tomorrow if you could. We'll handle the rest and explain what we did in English.
Is my data safe?
It's the first question every serious business asks, and the honest answer is that it depends on the job. Some of what we build never leaves your machine, like the actuarial tool above. Where we do use AI, we use accounts covered by a data processing agreement, so your data isn't used for training. We'll tell you exactly where your information goes before you agree to anything.
What does it cost?
It depends entirely on what the job is worth to you, which is why the counter above matters. We price against the hours it removes. You get the number before any work starts, and it doesn't change halfway through.
What if it doesn't work?
Then we say so. Some jobs aren't worth automating yet and we'll tell you on the first call rather than take your money to find out. If AI can't help your business, that's a perfectly good outcome for a twenty minute conversation.
How long does it take?
Small things, days. A proper bespoke build runs in stages, and you sign off each one before we start the next. You're never waiting months to see whether it worked.
Is this just a better ChatGPT?
No, and the section further up is the long answer. The short one: ChatGPT is a very good assistant with no memory of your business, no access to your systems, and no way to do the same job the same way twice. We build the part that's missing.
What's the job you dread?
Tell us the one you'd hand over tomorrow. We'll tell you whether it can go, and what that costs. If it can't, we'll tell you that too.
Book a call