Company size
AI for a company of forty to a hundred people
and what breaks at that size
At twenty people the owner still holds the whole picture. At sixty, nobody does. This page is about the systems that hold it instead, and the order to build them in.
Somewhere between twenty and a hundred people, a company stops fitting inside a spreadsheet and a WhatsApp group. Nothing has broken exactly. The owner has simply stopped being able to see the day without asking four people.
This is the size where enterprise software is sold to you and does not fit. The quotes assume a department to run it, a long implementation and a fee for every person who logs in. What a company of this size needs is four or five small systems that hold the records everybody already keeps by hand, and one place to ask them questions. I built exactly that for a forty-person wedding studio, and I run the same shape in my own studio of eighteen.
The owner is the integration
At this size the person who knows how the parts connect is you. Every answer goes through you, which is fine until the morning you are on a flight.
Records live in people's phones
Who approved that leave, what the client was promised, which vendor was paid. The answers exist, in chats that have scrolled away and in heads that leave with the person.
Enterprise software does not fit
Systems built for a thousand people assume a department to run them and charge for every login. The ones built for ten cannot hold your projects.
Fix one record, not everything
Companies this size get into trouble by buying a platform. The order matters more than the ambition: one record, used daily, before the next one is started.
Nobody will learn a new app
At forty people you cannot force adoption. If a system is not in the chat and on the phone people already use, it gets filled in on Fridays and is worthless.
What breaks between twenty and a hundred people
The symptoms are the same in a factory, a design practice, a wedding firm and a distribution business.
None of that is a crisis, which is why it runs for years. The cost shows up as the owner being the only route to an answer, as work repeated because nobody could see it was already done, and as a new hire taking a long time to become useful because the way things work is written down nowhere. The list below is what that looks like on an ordinary day.
- The owner is the only person who can answer anything
- Attendance on a register, copied into a sheet at month end
- Leave approved in a chat and remembered by nobody
- Daily work reported by asking around
- Client promises living in one person's phone
- A new joiner learning the business by sitting next to someone
What to fix first, and in what order
Always the record everything else leans on, which at this size is people. Who is in, who is out, who is on what. It is the easiest to get right, it is used by everybody every day, and it is the record that makes the next three worth building. Start with projects or with a dashboard instead and you get a screen nobody fills in.
After people comes the daily work record, because that is what managers need and what owners ask about. Then the enquiry trail, so a client's history sits in the business rather than in a phone. Then, and only then, an Agent in the team's chat that can answer from all of it. An Agent is a program that understands a question, does the work inside the apps you already use, and writes down what it did.
- People: attendance, leave and who is on what today
- Daily work: what each person finished, against the right project
- Enquiries: who asked, what they were told, what happens next
- Files: one portal, so nobody is hunting a version in a group chat
- Then the Agent, which can answer from all four
A complete people system for a forty-person studio
A wedding studio of forty people paid for exactly this build. Attendance comes from a fingerprint device at the door. Staff working away from the office check in from their phone with a photo taken at that moment, which matters when a crew is at a venue and nobody is there to see them arrive.
On top of that sit leave requests and approvals, a daily task record, teams, projects and a file portal the staff can use without being handed a drive. It was built on a computer the studio owns, with no monthly software fee behind any of the seven parts. It is the closest thing I have to a template for a company of this size, and it opens as a demo you can press.
My own studio of eighteen runs the same shape, which is where it was built and tested first. It was never rolled out to anybody, because all of it happens in the chat and on the phones they already had.
What it looks like afterwards
The visible change is that questions get asked of the records instead of of people. A manager types what is behind into the team chat and gets an answer with the record it came from. The owner stops being the integration layer. Nobody prepares a report for a meeting, because the meeting can see the day as it stands.
The quieter change is what happens when somebody leaves. The way the work is done sits in the system rather than in their head, so a new joiner reads it instead of being taught it. At this size that is the part that actually pays for the build.
How a build at this size is quoted
In parts, and almost nobody buys all of them at once. Attendance and leave is one. The daily work record is another. The file portal, the enquiry trail and the Agent are three more. The quote comes after the audit and names each part, the machine it runs on and the handover, and the schedule comes with it.
What moves the number at this size: how many parts you want, how much of the record keeping is on paper today, how many sites or branches there are, how many people have to approve something, and whether a computer you already own can do the work. There is no software subscription for the parts I build, which matters while the headcount is climbing.
How it runs
- 01
Audit
Time with the people who do the work, including the managers, and a map of how the day really moves. You get the leave-it-alone list too.
- 02
Start with one record
Usually people: attendance, leave and who is on what. It is built, used by one team, and left alone until it survives a normal week.
- 03
Add the next part
Daily work, then enquiries, then files. Each one goes in only once the last is being used without anybody being reminded to use it.
- 04
Hand it over
Training in person, time on site while people use it, and then the machine, the code and the accounts are yours.
Built, not described
Questions people ask
Is AI automation worth it for a 40 person company?
Usually yes, if the gain is in the records rather than in a chat window. At this size the value sits in attendance, leave, daily work and client history being written down once instead of asked about every day. The audit says which of those is costing you most.
How much does AI automation cost for a company our size?
It is quoted in parts after the audit, and the quote names each part, the machine and the handover. What moves it is how many parts you want, how much is on paper, how many branches there are, and whether you already own a machine. There is no software subscription afterwards.
We are 40 people. Are we too small for this?
No. The build I point to most often was for a company of exactly that size, and my own studio of eighteen runs the same shape. What would make you too small is a process still changing every month, in which case settle the process first.
Will my staff actually use it?
They use it when it is where they already are. Attendance from the device at the door, leave and tasks from the phone, answers in the team chat. Eighteen people in my studio use it daily and none of them were trained. A system that needs a training session is in the wrong place.
Do we have to replace our existing software?
Mostly no. Keep accounting, payroll and anything that tracks an outside rule. What gets replaced is the register, the sheet copied by hand, the group chat used as a record, and the follow-up that depends on somebody remembering.
What about enterprise software built for this?
Compare it honestly. It fits if your process looks like the one it was designed around and you have somebody to run it. It stops fitting when the fee is charged for every person who logs in and half the modules go unused. At this size a handful of small systems you own tends to fit better.
Can this run across more than one branch?
Yes. One machine in the main office, the other sites reaching it over the internet, and off-site staff checking in from a phone with a photo. Branches change the design more than headcount does, which is why the audit asks about them early.
Where should we start if the budget covers one part only?
People. Attendance, leave and who is on what today. Everybody uses it every day, it is the easiest to get right, and it is the record the others lean on. A dashboard built before that has nothing honest to show.
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