How we scope a fixed-price pilot
Bogdan Hruban · Wizeri
After the audit, you get a proposal. This note is about what is in it, why it is shaped the way it is, and how to read it if you are the owner or manager who has to decide. We have written enough of these, and sat on the receiving end of enough others, to have opinions.
A pilot is one process, not a programme
We do not propose transformations. We propose a pilot: one process, a clear scope, and a way to measure whether it worked. The reason is risk. Too many owners get pushed into all-or-nothing AI bets they cannot unwind. A pilot keeps the bet small enough that a wrong call costs you a few weeks, not a year.
The process we pick is the one the audit mapped. By the time the proposal exists, we have stood next to the person doing the work and know where the data enters, where it gets retyped and where it waits. The scope is written from that map, not from a meeting.
Why there are always three or more options
Every proposal we send has three or more options to choose from. This is not a sales trick where two options exist to make the third look reasonable. Each one is a real way to solve the problem, and each carries its own cost, its own risk and its own timeline.
Typically they look like this. The smallest option removes the single most painful manual step and leaves the rest alone. The middle option automates the process end to end on the tools you already run. The larger option also fixes the thing upstream that caused the manual work in the first place. Sometimes one of the options is "not yet": the process is changing, or the data is not ready, and building now would mean building twice.
You choose. We will tell you which one we would pick and why, but the decision stays with the people who run the business. That is the point of options: nobody should be handed a single take-it-or-leave-it plan for a process they understand better than we do.
Fixed scope, fixed price, a date
Each option has a fixed scope, a fixed price and a deadline agreed upfront, so you know exactly what you are getting before you commit. There are no open-ended retainers. If the scope needs to change halfway, that is a new conversation with a new number, not a surprise on an invoice.
We can only offer this because of the audit. A fixed price on a process nobody has looked at is a guess. A fixed price on a process we have mapped is a commitment we can keep.
How to read the proposal
A few things we would check, if we were on your side of the table.
Read the scope before the price. The scope says what the automation will and will not do. If a step you care about is not written down, it is not in the scope, whichever vendor you are reading. Ask.
Look for what you get at the end. Ours lists it: a production automation, the integrations it depends on, and a runbook your team can operate. If a proposal ends with "a solution" and no list of artefacts, you will find out what that means after you have paid.
Check where it runs. We build on the infrastructure and access you already control, using n8n, APIs and your existing cloud or on-premise setup. A pilot that only works inside a vendor's platform is a pilot you cannot walk away from.
Ask how you will know it worked. A pilot needs a measure agreed before the build starts: hours no longer spent, steps no longer done by hand, a report that appears on Monday without anyone touching it. If the proposal has no measure, add one before you sign.
Ask what happens after launch. We either keep the automation running with you or hand it over with the documentation. Both are fine. "We will see" is not.
What we leave out on purpose
You will not find a page of AI capabilities in our proposals, or a roadmap to a transformed company. Not because those things are wrong, but because they are not what you are buying. You are buying one process that works by itself, with a price and a date. The larger roadmap, if there is one, comes after the pilot has earned it.
You also will not find a discount for signing today. The price is the price. If it does not fit, the smallest option usually does, and a smaller first step beats a larger one nobody is sure about.
The decision we are actually asking for
By the time you are reading a proposal, the hard work of choosing a process is done. What is left is a smaller decision: which of these options is the right size for us, right now. That question has an answer most owners can give in a day, and if it does not, that is useful information too. It usually means the process is not the problem, and we should have another look before anybody builds anything.
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