GBCORP BLOG · AI
AI Consulting Company: What GBCORP Advises and What It Refuses
An AI consulting company is easy to judge: does its advice end in a system that runs, measured weekly? GBCORP's does, because the same company builds what it advises.
GBCORP is an AI consulting company that also builds and runs AI systems, and that changes the advice. A consultant who will not build has an incentive to recommend broadly; a builder who must make it work has an incentive to recommend narrowly and prove it. GBCORP’s consulting is a priced scoping week that ends in a chosen process, an evaluation set of real examples, a written scope and a fixed quotation. The business can build with GBCORP, with anyone else, or not at all, and it keeps the documents.
What the advice covers
| Question | GBCORP’s answer | Deliverable |
|---|---|---|
| Where AI pays | The processes with volume, a clear right answer and a low cost of error | Short list with reasons |
| What to do first | One step, not a programme | Chosen process and scope |
| Whether AI is needed at all | Often a rule or a configuration does the job | Written finding |
| What it will cost | Build per release, model usage at cost, support monthly | Fixed quotation |
| How to know it works | Accuracy per field against real examples, weekly | Evaluation set |
| Data and risk | What leaves the business, where, under what terms; where a person stays | Data flow and review points |
What GBCORP refuses to recommend
A model where a rule does the job. A first project with a subjective right answer. Removing the review step to make a demonstration look better. Sending unmasked sensitive data to a provider. A platform purchase before a single process is measured. A second process before the first shows its number. Each refusal is written into the scope with its reason, and each has saved a client a year.
The evaluation set is the consulting
Fifty to two hundred real examples with their correct answers, collected in the workshops with the people who do the work. It is the most valuable document the week produces: it lets any team test any model and know whether it works, and it grows once the step is live. Strategy decks age; an evaluation set is used every week.
How to judge any AI adviser
Ask which AI systems the company runs itself, in production, with weekly numbers. Ask to see an evaluation set from a live project. Ask what the adviser recommended against last quarter. Ask whether the fee is for a document or for a system. The answers separate advisers from builders, and a business usually needs the second.
Checklist before engaging an AI consulting company
- The two or three processes that consume the most repeated effort.
- The people who run them, available for two half-day workshops.
- Access to real examples: documents, messages, records.
- The systems those processes live in.
- The number the business wants to move.
- A decision-maker for the quotation at the end of the week.
The numbers to expect
One scoping week, priced on its own. A first step, if commissioned, live with its review screen in three to eight weeks at a fixed price. Accuracy measured weekly. Model usage at cost; support at a known monthly figure. Customised or more complex functionality is quoted separately before any work starts.
A worked example
A distribution group asked for an AI strategy after two board presentations. The scoping week mapped five processes and found the presentations had missed the most valuable: four people re-keying supplier invoices. Two hundred invoices were collected with their correct values; a scope was written for an extraction step with review; a fixed price was quoted. The assistant the board had discussed was listed as a later step with reasons. The invoice step went live in six weeks, showed its hours saved by week eight, and the assistant was commissioned the following quarter from evidence.
Consulting for businesses with their own developers
Where a business has a team, GBCORP’s week produces the scope and the evaluation set for that team to build against, with GBCORP’s quotation as a comparison. Some clients build in house and return for the second scoping week; some hand the first step to GBCORP and keep the second. The documents work either way, because they describe the process and the measure, not a vendor.
Governance without a committee
One page per AI step: what it does, what data it sends and where, who reviews what, the accuracy and cost this week, and who owns the decision to expand or stop it. GBCORP writes that page in the scoping week and updates it under the support plan. A business with five steps has five pages, and its board reads them in ten minutes.
Data protection in the advice
The week names what data each step would send outside the business, where it would be processed, under what terms, and which fields must be masked first. It names where a person must stay: anything that moves money, changes a legal state or sends a message outside the business. These are written into the scope, not discussed later.
Multilingual by default
Advice covers the languages the business serves. Assistants answer in the customer’s language from content written in one; extraction reads several scripts; interfaces are multilingual with right-to-left layouts as a setting. A business in several markets scopes one step, not one per language.
Ownership of the documents
The process map, the evaluation set, the scope and the quotation are the business’s, delivered in plain formats, usable with any builder. The examples stay in the business’s own project. No credentials are retained by GBCORP after the week unless a build is commissioned.
Questions we hear first
Do you also build what you recommend?
Yes, which is the reason the recommendations are narrow and measurable.
Can we take your scope to another builder?
Yes. The documents are yours; the quotation is one option.
Do you work with businesses that have no AI experience?
Most do not. The workshops need the people who know the process, not people who know AI.
What if you find AI is not the answer?
The week says so, with reasons, and often proposes a rule or a configuration that does the job.
Where to start
The GBCORP AI Development and Automation product is the priced starting point; the GBCORP AI development and machine learning hub sets out the method. For the week itself, read AI consulting services explained.
GBCORP operates across 17 countries on 4 continents through six pillars: AI & IT, Innovation, Sustainability, Infrastructure, Premium Business, and EV's & Solutions.
