I work in your business for a few days. Then we talk about AI.
So far, artificial intelligence has mostly been talk. You know you ought to do something. Nobody who actually understands your business has told you what.
I do it the other way round. The business first, the technology second. I work alongside your people like any new colleague – in the daily grind, not in the meeting room. Then I show you where automation saves hours immediately, and where it delivers nothing.
The first call is free. Everything after it is not.
Swiss businesses only. On site, not by video call.
- No strategy document
- No pilot without measurable value
- No annual contract
Why the usual route fails
«We need to do something with AI» is not a strategy. It is a gut feeling under time pressure.
The value of artificial intelligence gets promised in presentations and rarely delivered on the shop floor. That is almost never the technology's fault. It is because the people selling it have never watched how a quotation comes together in your business.
Then there is the obvious part: you do not know me. Why would you believe a stranger who tells you where the money is hiding in your own company? That is exactly why I do not start with an offer. I start by working alongside you. Anyone who has spent a week next to your people no longer has to claim they understand the business.
Where things stand
What actually gets in the way
Not a lack of technology. That has existed for years and has become affordable.
The quotation written at night
Costing happens after hours, because the business runs during the day. Every enquiry costs hours nobody bills – and the biggest jobs arrive with the thickest specifications.
Software that does everything except talk to each other
Job management, time tracking, accounting, the inbox. Each system fine on its own. In between sits a person typing numbers from one window into another.
Processes that are really workarounds
Many routines exist not because they are clever but because some program could not do something. The program was replaced long ago. The routine stayed, and nobody dares touch it.
Knowledge that lives in one head
How to cost a job properly is known by the one person who has been here fourteen years. When they take a holiday, the customer waits. That is not a staffing problem, it is a design flaw.
Pilots that never reach daily work
A tool was tested, judged useful, and never finished. Insight was not missing. What was missing was someone to do the last twenty per cent while the business kept running.
If three of these bring an example from this week to mind, a conversation is worth your time.
Approach
Four steps. None of them is a workshop.
You can stop after any one of them. That is meant literally, not as a sales line.
Thirty minutes on the phone
You describe what is on your mind. I tell you honestly whether I can contribute anything. If I cannot, I say so – which saves us both an afternoon.
Half a day at your place
I come by, watch and ask a lot. Not in the meeting room, but where the work happens. By the evening you know whether we fit, and you have a first honest assessment.
A few days working alongside you
I work like a new colleague: enquiries, quotations, invoicing, whatever comes up. That is how I see what really eats time. It is regularly something other than what the process diagram says.
Build, measure, hand over
We take the two or three points with the greatest leverage and finish them – for daily use, not as an experiment. If it works, we measure it against what applied before. Then it is yours, including the answer to who maintains it.
If you already have concrete plans or project ideas, we skip the first steps. Then I assess what is on the table and guide the implementation.
Sectors
Where the leverage is greatest
Three kinds of business where the effort almost always pays for itself.
Trades and construction
Businesses answering a constant stream of quotations, specifications and tenders – with the costing knowledge held in very few heads.
- Reading tenders and specifications
- Costing, variations, options
- Site reports, day work, invoicing
Professional services
Businesses that sell their time and therefore feel every hour that goes into administration instead of client work.
- Capturing and qualifying enquiries
- Proposals and contracts
- Documentation, evidence, reports
Administration
Teams that already work efficiently – and whose routines still snag at the seams between systems.
- Moving data between systems
- Recurring checks and approvals
- Answers that are always the same
What a result looks like
Three examples – invented, and realistic anyway
What I see inside a business stays there, which is why you will find no client names here. These three cases are constructed. They show the kind of result this is about.
Joinery, 18 staff
Example
Enquiries arrive as PDFs, emails or phone notes. The owner costs them in the evening because only he holds the prices. Two out of three quotations go out late.
Two days working alongside them, logging every enquiry for a week. Then a first stage that pulls the line items from the enquiry and pre-costs them using the firm's own experience. The owner checks and releases.
The first draft of a quotation takes minutes instead of an evening. The decision still happens in the business – just no longer at eleven at night.
Invented example for illustration, not a client case. Figures are orders of magnitude, not promises.
Engineering firm, 40 staff
Example
Every tender means reading an eighty-page specification and translating it into a response structure. Two experienced people spend a week each on it.
Read along, wrote along, understood what the two actually look for. Built a tool that extracts the requirements, maps the firm's existing text to them and flags what is missing.
A week of preparation becomes a day of review. Professional responsibility stays where it belongs; the donkey work does not.
Invented example for illustration, not a client case. Figures are orders of magnitude, not promises.
Accounting office, 12 staff
Example
Client documents arrive by email, post and portal. Someone sorts, renames and files them. Queries go through the same person who also prepares the year-end accounts.
A week working in the team, counting every step. Then the intake was automated: documents recognised, assigned, filed, and anything missing chased automatically.
The sorting work all but disappears. The experienced professional does accounts again instead of file names.
Invented example for illustration, not a client case. Figures are orders of magnitude, not promises.
About
Who will be standing in your business
I am not a consultancy and I do not send anyone in my place. If you book me, I come myself – and I work.
My background is engineering and delivery, not presentation. As a rule I build what I propose. That limits how many businesses I can support at once, and in exchange keeps the work short and concrete.
What I do not do: strategy papers, maturity models, three-year roadmaps. If that is what you are after, one of the large consultancies will serve you better.
- NameGioacchino Franzese
- Area coveredAll of Switzerland – on site
- LanguagesGerman, English, French, Italian
- AvailabilityTwo to three mandates at a time, no more
- Not on offerConcepts without delivery, off-the-shelf training
Insights
What is going on right now
Every working day, one short read: what happened in the world of artificial intelligence – and what of it actually matters to a Swiss SME.
The first post will appear here shortly.
Let us talk for thirty minutes.
You describe your situation, I tell you whether and where I see leverage. No documents, no preparation, no slides.
The call is free and without obligation. It ends either with a next step or with an honest no.