AI in a mid-sized company

AI inside a company of 20 to 200 people.
Where it pays, where to start.

Across 5 composite companies of 32 to 90 people, AI takes over 63 to 69 percent of the hours in the five jobs each audit found. That is 1,879 to 2,369 hours a year per company. It drafts, chases, sorts, writes and tracks. A person approves. None of the five buys new production software. The work happens in the inbox, the spreadsheet and the trade system the company already runs.

Companies modelled
5 · 32 to 90 people · €4.5M to €22M
Hours returned a year
1,879 to 2,369 per company
Share of the hours taken over
63 to 69%
First job built in
between 7 and 11 weeks

Composite companies at the scale we work with, none of them a client. Every figure follows from printed inputs you can replace with your own.

Apply for an audit · from $2.5K

If the audit finds nothing worth building, you don't pay.

Five companies, one job each to start

Each row is a sector and the size of the composite firm. Then the job the audit put first, and the hours returned across all five jobs against the hours they take today.

Sector Revenue · people First job Hours returned / today Share
Home services €4.5M · 32 Enquiries into booked jobs 2,239 / 3,262 69%
Professional services €6M · 40 Chasing what clients owe 1,938 / 2,834 68%
Distribution €14M · 45 Quotes from the inbox 1,997 / 2,963 67%
Construction €18M · 70 Estimating and take-off 2,369 / 3,780 63%
Manufacturing €22M · 90 Tender replies 1,879 / 2,964 63%

Hours are the five audited jobs added up. A job passes to the system only for the share a person can check afterwards.

Read the five walkthroughs

What AI does in a company this size

Three shapes of work, whatever the sector.

  • Drafts: a quote, a tender reply, a site report, an answer to a customer, from the documents the company already holds
  • Chases: suppliers, unpaid invoices, missing papers, the reply that never came, with every non-answer left visible
  • Tracks: expiry dates, exceptions, the thing that changed and nobody logged, and puts it in front of the person who decides

What it needs from you first

Less than the guides say. The audit measures three things, and none of them is a clean database.

  • Who touches the process, and how many hands it passes through
  • How many processes are in scope: one to start, never five
  • Where the information sits: the inbox, a spreadsheet, a shared drive, someone's memory

A process running on a spreadsheet and people's memory is the normal starting place. Tidying it first would be spending money on the part the system handles.

Where to start

One process. The one that keeps the owner or one senior person in the office after six. In the five companies above it was quotes, tenders, chasing, estimating and enquiries. Yours is the one you already know.

Finding out costs $2,500–$5,000: two conversations over fourteen days, ending in a build order with the arithmetic under it. If there is nothing worth building, you don't pay.

What the audit costs, day by day

What the chambers and the state say, and where they stop

The CCI, Bpifrance and the state's guide all describe programmes, funding routes and case studies. Read them. None prints the hours for a company of 50 people, and none says which process to start with.

Read in September 2026: francenum.gouv.fr answers ten questions on AI in small companies, and Bpifrance publishes owner testimonies. Both are free and worth an hour.

What owners ask

Which is the best AI for a company like ours?

The general models behind ChatGPT and Claude, reading what you already have. The choice of tool is the smallest decision. The larger ones are which process, who approves, and where the information sits.

How do I use AI in my company without a project team?

Start with one process and the two people who run it. The system drafts, they check. When the checking takes less time than the doing did, move to the next process.

Do we need to clean up our data first?

No. Where the information sits is one of the three things the audit measures, and a spreadsheet plus an inbox is the usual answer. Cleaning it first would be paying for the part the system does.

What does it cost for a company of 50 people?

The audit is $2,500–$5,000. What the audit finds sets the price of the first job. In the five composite companies the first job took between 7 and 11 weeks to build. You see the number before you decide.

Does it replace people?

It returns hours. Only two of the five companies turn work away today, and only there do the hours become more output. Everywhere else they become speed, and the same people do the work with fewer evenings.

We are a family business with no IT department. Does that matter?

That is who we work with. One of us works alongside your team on the ground, and the system runs on the tools you already pay for. The audit names the person inside the company who has to own it for it to hold.

Two weeks. A plan you can defend.

From $2.5K, fixed scope, half of it off the build if you go ahead within 30 days, and the first call is free. You'll know what to build, in what order, and what it gives back, before you commit to building it.

Tell us the one process that costs you most. One of us reads every application and answers it with a name.

We invoice in US dollars from Sena Technologies, Inc.; the French page shows the same amounts in euros.

We reply within two business days, always with a name. No sequence, no chasing.