Line drawing of a cylindrical propellant tank inside an open truss frame, braced by rings along its length.

AI consulting for mid-market companies without an AI team

You have departments, an ERP, a CRM, and people who already use ChatGPT on their own time. Nobody's job is to make AI work across all of it. Phos AI Labs is that team. We audit how the company really runs, build what pays for itself, and stay to keep it running.

Book a strategy call →Take the AI Readiness Scorecard

Mid-market AI consulting helps companies with real departments and no in-house AI team decide where AI belongs, then builds it into the systems they already run. In 6 of the 8 audit reports Phos AI Labs has produced since April 2026, a spreadsheet was a direct source of manual work. In 6, real work ran through WhatsApp. We start where those hours go.

OpenAI Select Partner and Claude Partner Network

Claude (Anthropic) Partner · Select OpenAI Partner · CCA-F certified team

  • 40+ AI systems

    shipped to production in the last 6 months

  • 274 pain points

    documented across our last 8 audit reports

Trusted across 450+ builds

  • American Express
  • Coca-Cola
  • Sotheby's
  • Medtronic
  • Dataiku
  • Margaritaville
  • Zapier
  • Whitecoat Planning

Why does AI stall in companies this size?

Mid-market companies adopted AI fast. In RSM's 2025 middle market survey, 91% were using generative AI, 62% said it was harder to implement than expected, and 70% said they needed outside help to get the most out of it. The gap sits in how the work around the tools is set up.

  • AI lives in personal accounts

    Your operations manager built a great Claude project. Your controller pays for ChatGPT himself. None of it is shared, and when one of them leaves, the work leaves with them.

  • The spreadsheet owns the truth

    The ERP is the system of record on paper. In practice, someone exports to Excel every Monday, fixes it by hand, and the meeting runs on that version. AI on top of three sources of truth gives you three answers.

  • IT is careful and stretched thin

    One or two people keep the network, the ERP, and the laptops running. They are right to be wary of tools that ask for write access to everything, and they don't have the hours to vet each one.

  • The licenses got bought, then sat

    Leadership rolled out ChatGPT or Copilot seats to show progress. A few people use them every day. When the renewal comes up, nobody can say what the seats replaced.

RSM's 2026 survey of 1,030 middle market firms named data quality (53%) and integration (47%) as the top two barriers to scaling AI. Both are fixable, and both show up in the first week of an audit.

The work that matters most sits between your systems

Every handoff loses something. Marketing hands sales a lead without the context. Sales hands production an order with the real change in a WhatsApp note. Finance types in what the warehouse already typed.

Phos AI Labs maps those handoffs department by department, prices what each one costs in time, and builds where the return is clear. The same team runs the interviews, writes the roadmap, and ships the first builds.

What you walk away with

  1. 01

    AI Readiness report

    Scored across data, systems, team, and governance, one department at a time.

  2. 02

    Handoff map

    Every point where work moves between people or tools, and what gets lost there.

  3. 03

    Source-of-truth decision

    Which system owns each kind of data, so AI reads from one place.

  4. 04

    Opportunity register

    Each opportunity priced as time per task, times how often it happens, times the people doing it, then checked with your department heads.

  5. 05

    Build-or-buy report

    A call on every tool: keep, extend, replace, or retire. Sometimes the answer is an off-the-shelf tool that costs a few hundred dollars a month.

  6. 06

    Tool spend baseline

    What you pay for software today, and what the roadmap lets you cancel.

  7. 07

    KPI baseline

    The numbers you track today, or the ones we help you start tracking, so you can see what changed.

  8. 08

    Two first projects

    One picked for return, one quick win so the team sees AI help them before anyone worries about their job.

  9. 09

    Phase 1 Proposal

    A fixed scope and price for the first build, or the embedded team option.

  10. 10

    Interview appendix

    Transcripts from every AI voice interview, in English or Spanish.

What actually happens once you start?

The audit runs 3 to 6 weeks, depending on how many departments are involved. Here is what it asks of your team at each stage.

  1. Weeks 1 to 2

    Interviews

    Leadership joins 4 to 7 working sessions. Everyone else does one AI voice interview of about 40 minutes, in English or Spanish, and can pause and pick it up between tasks. People tell the interviewer things they would never tell a boss.

  2. Weeks 2 to 4

    Systems and findings

    We get read-only access to the ERP, the CRM, and the shared drives, map how data moves, and price every opportunity. A consultant reviews every finding before you see it.

  3. Weeks 4 to 6

    Roadmap

    You get the roadmap by department, the two first projects, and a fixed Phase 1 Proposal. All of it is yours whether or not you build with us.

  4. Month 2 onward

    Build and train

    A consultant and an engineer build the first two projects and train the people who will use them. The most engaged person in each department spends 1 to 2 hours a week with us.

Where else can a first engagement start?

Most companies this size start with the full audit. Some want a smaller first step, and some are bigger than they look.

  1. AI Readiness Audit

    A two-week, consultant-led audit for teams that want the findings before they commit to a roadmap.

  2. AI Foundation

    The SOPs, decision rules, and governance your team and your AI tools work from.

  3. Enterprise AI consulting

    For companies with a security review, a procurement process, and AI already running in more than one business unit.

Why does the first project depend on your industry?

A distributor loses hours between the customer's PO and the order entry screen. An engineering firm loses them inside proposals. A contractor loses money on change orders agreed on site and never billed.

Aviation Manufacturing Healthcare
Finance Advisory Insurance Real Estate
Ecommerce Logistics Staffing
HR SaaS Construction
Field Service Legal Retail
Accounting Marketing Property Management

Don’t see your industry?

If someone on your team retypes what another system already holds, there is a first project.

Book a call

What does this actually change?

  1. 01

    The owner stops being the integration layer

    Status updates, proposals, and exceptions stop routing through one person's inbox. You review the hard cases and the system handles the rest.

  2. 02

    One version of the numbers

    Reports come from the system of record, on time, so the Monday meeting starts with decisions.

  3. 03

    Growth without matching headcount

    The next hire joins a company where the routine work already runs. People move to the work that needs their judgment.

Does the audit find real money?

LOW/CODE Agency

CONTEXT

A 40-person company where every proposal needed the CEO and preparing for one client call took a full day across four or five systems.

WHAT PHOS AI LABS DID

Interviewed 29 of 34 team members with the AI voice interviewer, about 12 hours of conversation, mapped every tool and handoff, then built two AI employees on the top two findings.

RESULT

77 pain points and 29 opportunities documented, an estimated 99.7 hours a week of recoverable time valued at $376,800 a year, and 707 qualified leads surfaced from 2,400 dormant contacts.

Every proposal needed me in the room. The sales team couldn't move without me, which meant I was the bottleneck in my own company. Now the AI handles the routine ones. I review the complex cases. That's the job I should have had all along.

— Jesus Vargas, Founder and CEO, LOW/CODE Agency

Read the full story →

Why Phos AI Labs over a big firm, a freelancer, or a new hire?

  1. 01

    Sized for companies like yours

    Large consultancies staff and price for Fortune 500 programs. Phos AI Labs works with companies from $5M in revenue up, and AI discovery for teams under 100 people starts at $10,000.

  2. 02

    A team for the price of a hire

    A senior AI lead costs $250K+ a year and takes months to find. You get a consultant, an engineer, and a tech lead behind them from the first week. If one person leaves, the work stays.

  3. 03

    We'll tell you what not to build

    Phos AI Labs earns no reseller commissions or license quotas. When an off-the-shelf tool does the job, the build-or-buy report says so, even when that means a smaller engagement for us.

How much does AI consulting cost for a mid-market company?

For companies under 100 employees, AI discovery with Phos AI Labs starts at $10,000. Larger organizations get a scoped discovery priced to the number of teams and systems involved. After discovery, ongoing implementation typically runs $10,000 to $50,000 a month, depending on scope.

  • AI discovery

    from $10,000 under 100 employees

    The full audit and every deliverable above, from the AI Readiness report to the Phase 1 Proposal. Larger teams get a scoped price. You own all of it, whether or not you build with us.

    Start here

  • Implementation

    from $10,000 /mo.

    Up to $50,000 a month. The first two projects built, shipped to production, and improved as they run, then the next ones from the roadmap. The number scales with how much is being built at once.

    Book a call

Some of the budget is already in your software bill. Companies this size usually pay for three or four tools that each cover a slice of what one connected system could do. The tool spend baseline finds them, so part of the work is paid for by spend you already have.

Keep going

Low-commitment ways to see where your company stands before a call.

  1. 01

    AI Readiness Scorecard

    Ten questions and a personal score. See where your company stands before you talk to anyone.

    Explore →
  2. 02

    AI Readiness Voice Audit

    A short voice interview, the same method used in the full audit, in miniature.

    Explore →
  3. 03

    Deploy Claude Blueprint

    The six-step guide to rolling Claude out across a team, free.

    Explore →
  4. 04

    Case studies

    What Phos AI Labs has shipped, with the numbers behind each build.

    Explore →

In partnership with

  • Anthropic
  • OpenAI
  • Zo
  • Make

FAQs

What is mid-market AI consulting?
Mid-market AI consulting helps companies with real departments and no in-house AI team decide where AI belongs, then builds it into the systems they already run. At Phos AI Labs it starts with an audit of how the work really happens, then a ranked roadmap, then production builds that a consultant and an engineer keep improving.
What counts as a mid-market company?
There is no single definition. The National Center for the Middle Market uses $10 million to $1 billion in annual revenue, and RSM uses $30 million to $10 billion. Phos AI Labs works with companies from $5 million up, with no ceiling. The more useful test is practical: several departments, an ERP or CRM, and no AI team.
How much does AI consulting cost for a mid-market company?
For companies under 100 employees, AI discovery with Phos AI Labs starts at $10,000. Larger organizations get a scoped discovery priced to the number of teams and systems involved. After discovery, ongoing implementation typically runs $10,000 to $50,000 a month, depending on scope. The audit also finds software spend you can cancel.
How much of our team's time does it take?
Less than most owners expect. Leadership joins 4 to 7 sessions over about two weeks. Everyone else does one AI voice interview of about 40 minutes, which they can pause and resume. During the build, the most engaged person in each department spends 1 to 2 hours a week with us.
We already pay for ChatGPT or Copilot. Why isn't that enough?
Licenses give each person a private assistant. They don't connect to your ERP or CRM, share what one person figured out with everyone else, or decide which work should go to AI. Phos AI Labs keeps the tools you already pay for when they fit and builds the company layer they are missing.
Our IT person is wary of AI. Is that a problem?
No, and they are usually right to be careful. Phos AI Labs starts with read-only access, logs every write, and grants write access by role and by use case. IT approves access and security, and operations owns the project. Most IT leads relax once they see how narrow each permission is.
Do we need clean data before we start?
No. Sorting out the data is part of the work. The audit decides which system owns each kind of record and finds where a spreadsheet has become the real one. Some fixes are a plain report or an integration. AI comes once there is one source of truth for it to read.
Will AI replace people on our team?
It depends on how you run it, and most clients choose to grow first. One operations leader at a 250-person distributor put it plainly: automate now and let normal turnover do the rest, because people support a system they don't fear. That is also why every roadmap starts with one quick win.
Do we own what you build?
Yes. Every engagement is work for hire, built in your accounts: your cloud, your repositories, and your API keys. The roadmap, code, prompts, and documentation are yours. You can keep a small support plan with Phos AI Labs or hand everything to someone else.

The fastest way to know whether we're the right fit, is a conversation.

STEP 1/2 · ABOUT YOU