Questions,
answered.

ifelse is an AI consulting firm focused exclusively on small and medium businesses. We help you identify where AI and automation can save time or make money, then we build and implement those solutions. Think of us as your AI department, without the overhead of hiring one.

Not at all. We handle everything: discovery, build, testing, and training. You just need to understand your own business, which you already do.

Typically businesses with 2–150 employees. Large enough to have real operational complexity, small enough that every hour of time saved actually matters. We don't work with enterprise companies, that's a deliberate choice that keeps us focused.

We work across industries: professional services, retail, hospitality, trades, healthcare admin, e-commerce, and more. AI and automation challenges tend to be similar across sectors, even if the surface-level workflows look different.

It starts with a free 15 minute discovery call. From there, we scope an Opportunity Map (a structured audit of your operations), then move into build and deployment. Most projects go from first call to live solution in 2–6 weeks, depending on complexity.

Strategy sessions take 1–2 weeks. Simple automations can be live in a week. Custom AI tools or larger workflow overhauls typically take 4–8 weeks. We always give you a clear timeline upfront and stick to it.

Yes, always. Every engagement includes handover documentation and a training session for your team. We want you to be fully self-sufficient, not dependent on us to keep things running.

Every engagement is scoped and priced individually based on complexity and time. A strategy session starts from R15,000. Simple automations from R35,000. More complex custom builds vary. We'll give you a fixed-price quote before any work begins, no hidden costs.

The tools we use (e.g. Claude Code, Zapier, OpenAI API) will have their own subscription costs, and we'll advise exactly what these are before we recommend anything. Our build fee is one-off. We offer optional monthly support retainers, but they're never required.

Yes, genuinely. No sales pressure, no follow-up pitch sequence. We'll give you honest advice about whether we can help you, and if we can't, we'll point you somewhere that can. The goal is to figure out if there's a fit, not to close a deal.

We're genuinely tool-agnostic, we recommend what's right for your situation. Commonly used platforms include n8n, OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, PostgreSQL, Docker and custom Python/Node builds where needed.

We take data security seriously. We'll advise on best practices for whichever tools we recommend and sign NDAs where required. We can work within your existing compliance requirements.

All our builds include appropriate human oversight and error-handling logic. We design for the reality that AI isn't perfect, which means flagging uncertainty, routing edge cases to humans, and building in monitoring. You'll always know what the AI is doing and when a person needs to step in.

Highly dependent on what we're automating. Typical outcomes include 40–70% reduction in time spent on specific manual tasks, 3x faster customer response times, and significant reductions in human error. We'll give you realistic projections for your specific situation upfront.

Most clients see ROI within the first 2–3 months of a project going live. Automations that replace significant manual labour often pay back their build cost within weeks. We prioritise quick-win projects first to ensure you see tangible results before moving to larger initiatives.

We build clear success criteria into every engagement before we start. If we don't hit them, we keep working until we do, at no additional cost. We've never had to invoke this clause, but it's there.