Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing industries, transforming how businesses operate and drive profitability. While we’re still in the early stages of this revolution, We’ve had countless conversations with leaders who are already leveraging AI to gain a competitive edge—and just as many with those who don’t know where to begin.  

Based on these conversations, here’s a practical guide to making impactful AI investments, whether your budget is $2 million, $200,000, or $20,000. 

$2 Million for AI

A $2 million budget for AI allows for targeted, high-impact projects that can significantly enhance business processes and profitability for medium-sized enterprises.

How to Deploy $2 Million

1. Hire a small, internal AI team (2-5 people).
2. Build out a private Large Language Model (LLM) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).
3. Engage a consulting team for 1-2 custom use cases.

Important Considerations for $2 Million

Building an internal AI team of five can easily exceed $600,000+ per year in salaries alone. Beyond hiring top talent, companies must build and maintain integrations with existing systems, such as Slack or Salesforce. Cloud hosting and monitoring to support your own AI environment can add $10,000-$20,000k per month to your costs, and without regular model updates, your AI risks becoming outdated. 

Key Investment Areas for $2 Million

• Operational Efficiency: Automate processes to reduce manual effort and operating expenses. For example, connect legacy billing systems to newer applications without a costly migration.
• Customer Insights: Analyze customer data and predict trends, enabling better decision-making. For example, flag potential churns based on changes in software usage and communication patterns over time that are specific to each customer.
• Marketing Optimization: Optimize marketing campaigns, targeting the right audience with precision. For example, a marketing team writes a piece of collateral once. They then leverage AI to create 10-20 variations of the piece, tailored to different industries. 

$200,000 for AI

A $200,000 AI budget allows businesses to still make meaningful AI investments that drive profitability through improved efficiency and customer engagement. 

How to Deploy $200,000

• Engage a consulting team to build out 1-2 use cases, OR
• Add 1 AI expert and allow that person to build out a private LLM and RAG generator.

Important Considerations for $200,000

AI consulting services are rapidly expanding, with the market projected to grow from $100 billion today to over $600 billion in ten years. Consulting projects can start in the $10-$20k range but can scale significantly based on complexity. Alternatively, hiring an internal AI expert offers more control but comes with the added responsibility of maintaining and updating hardware and software resources. Either way, investing in an organizational rollout—including education, change management, and analytics—is crucial to driving adoption and ensuring success.

Key Investment Areas for $200,000

• AI-powered tools: Software that assists with specific tasks like image analysis, data entry, or customer support.
• Data analytics: Gain insights from real time customer data and uptime performance, improving products and services.
• AI chatbots: Deploy AI chatbots to handle customer inquiries, enhancing service without increasing headcount.

$20,000 for AI

Even with a modest budget of $20,000, businesses can make strategic AI investments that allow them to keep pace with competitor AI activity. The key is starting small while thinking big, building a foundation that allows your company to keep up with the rapidly evolving AI landscape. 

How to Deploy $20,000

• Turn on AI add-ons within existing applications, OR 
• Leverage a private work AI provider like illumiDesk

Important Considerations for $20,000

AI is changing so quickly that the biggest danger is not starting. Starting small allows you to cut your teeth, test what works for your business, increase employee AI fluency, and lay the groundwork for future investments. The writing on the wall is clear: act now, or risk falling behind. 

Key Investment Areas for $20,000

• AI knowledge solutions: Subscribing to AI-powered Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms that offer tools for your entire organization to share knowledge across silos (marketing, sales, customer service, product, and implementation).
• Software co-pilots: Allow AI to synthesize meetings, help draft emails and memos, and support activity in different software applications.
• Customer or internal-facing chatbots: Unlock your knowledge for customers and employees by connecting AI to internal knowledge to become the first line of customer support.

Get Started with AI by Leveraging Your Internal Resources 

The time to embrace AI is now. With illumiDesk, you can easily turn your internal resources into a private generative AI solution. Every employee has access to all of the information in the organization, no matter what system it resides in. Our AI solution centralizes multiple types of content, such as chat, search, avatars, text and image generation, and integrated content, putting it at your team’s fingertips when they need it most. 

Interested in seeing how we can help your organization? Let’s start a conversation today.