What AI automation services cover
An AI automation takes a routine job off a person’s desk. It reads the email or document, sorts it, drafts the reply or the entry, and hands a person anything that costs money or that a customer will read. It works inside the CRM, accounts package and inbox you already run, so your team gets the hours back without learning a new system.
Most Irish firms have not reached this point yet. The CSO found that 20.2% of enterprises used AI in 2025, but only 6.2% used it to automate a workflow or assist a decision (CSO, Information Society Statistics: Enterprises 2025).
The hard part of any automation is connecting it to the systems your business already runs on, and that is work we deliver. The IPAV member directory stays synchronised with the Institute’s CRM. The ERP HEADtoHEAD booking engine is set up to bill each event from its own company, in its own currency. At ESMA International Network, one admin panel feeds the public site and both apps. Our AI integration services set out that build work in full.
What we automate
- Accounting automation. Supplier invoices, receipts and payments flowing into Xero, Sage or QuickBooks as drafts for approval.
- CRM integration. One customer record shared by your CRM, accounts package and website.
- A private AI assistant. Answers drawn from your own documents, with the source cited.
- Business process automation. Approvals, onboarding and reports moved into workflows, built in whichever tool suits each one, from Zapier to custom code.
Which processes are worth automating first?
A good first project runs at least weekly, has a before-and-after measure such as hours or error rate, and fails somewhere a person can see it and undo it.
- Document processing. Invoices, dockets and application forms read, checked and routed to the right queue.
- Quote generation. Drafted from your own rules and price history, often inside a custom quoting tool. The system never sets a price.
- Reporting. Figures pulled from several systems into one weekly report, with draft commentary for a person to edit.
- Onboarding. Documents checked and accounts created. This often sits inside a custom software development project.
Our guide to AI automation for Irish SMEs works through seven candidates in detail, from inbox triage to invoice chasing.
How human-in-the-loop review works
Every plan names its review points before the build: where money moves, where a customer hears from you and where a record changes for good. At each one the system prepares the work and a named person approves it. The build adds a confidence threshold that sends uncertain work to a person, an audit trail of each input, output and reviewer, and a one-click override.
We run our own studio this way. Client support email is sorted by rules, and anything uncertain waits for a person. Each morning an AI summary of every open project is written from the project records, and a guard in the code stops the AI writing any figure.
Evaluation and guardrails we build into every automation
Before the build we agree a test set with you: a sample of your own records with a definition of a correct answer. We measure against it before launch and again as your data changes. Each plan also sets hard limits (what the system may never do, such as send money, change a price or delete a record), a cap on model usage, and a fallback that drops work into your manual queue if a provider fails.
Does our data stay in the EU?
It should, and we write EU hosting into each plan as a requirement. The plan names the model provider, its processing region and the terms that keep your data out of model training. The provider can be swapped without a rebuild, and the code and data are yours. If an off-the-shelf assistant would do the job, we compare ChatGPT Business, Copilot, Gemini and Claude on price per seat and GDPR.
Inbox triage and AI receptionists for customer service
Anything a customer will read is drafted for a person to send. In inbox triage each message is classified, a ticket is opened and a reply is drafted in your tone. Complaints, legal matters and money questions go to a person with no draft attached.
Any AI receptionist we build follows the same rule on the phone: it answers common questions and logs a booking request or message for your team to confirm, and never confirms a booking or quotes a price itself.
What an AI agent is and what we let it do
An AI agent is a model that takes steps as well as answering: it looks up an order, updates a CRM record, then chooses its next step from the result. Each step can go wrong, so an agent starts with read access only. Write actions are added one category at a time, each behind a review point and inside the plan’s hard limits.
Connecting AI to your CRM, accounts and inbox
Most of the work in an automation is connecting the model to your existing systems through APIs and webhooks, so a result becomes an action: a draft bill in the ledger, a ticket in the help desk, a note on the customer record. Each connection starts read-only and gains write access one step at a time, so nothing in your live systems changes until the plan says it may.
That groundwork is what the three builds above prove. Membership applications at IPAV run online with payment through Stripe, the ERP HEADtoHEAD booking engine runs on Stripe and WooCommerce, and ESMA International Network’s site and apps share one custom platform.
How we scope and price an automation
- Opportunity mapping. We map each process with the people who run it, and fix a broken process before automating it. Each is ranked on hours, frequency, error cost and data readiness, and some are marked “do not automate this yet”.
- Costed plan. For the top one or two candidates: the systems touched, the review points, the capped running cost and a fixed build price.
- Build. Built against the test set, then released to a small group before it widens. An optional retainer from €2,000/month covers monitoring after launch.
Can the Grow Digital Voucher fund AI automation?
Only the off-the-shelf part: the voucher can part-fund a software subscription and its setup, but it excludes custom software. See the Grow Digital Voucher rules, and AI grants in Ireland for the other schemes.
