Comparison
Eleven Cloud vs a Large Consulting Firm
The big firms have real AI practices now, and for a company with ten thousand employees and a board that needs convincing, they earn their fees.
For a company at $5M, the shape of what they sell rarely matches the shape of the problem.
The short answer
A large firm is the right choice when you need organisational change, board-level buy-in, and a programme across many business units. Eleven Cloud is the right choice when one operation is costing you money and you want it replaced and running.
Side by side
| Eleven Cloud | A large consulting firm | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical output | A live system in your business | A strategy, a roadmap, and pilots |
| Engagement length | Weeks | Quarters |
| Who does the work | The people you met on the first call | A team, often junior, staffed after signature |
| Cost | A defined project fee | Six figures and up |
| Best at | Replacing one expensive operation | Change across a large organisation |
| Training | Your operator, until they run it | Workshops and enablement material |
| Who builds | Us, then it is yours | Often a separate implementation partner |
| Best fit | Owner-led companies at $3M to $10M | Enterprises with committees |
Strategy is not your constraint
You already know roughly where the money goes. You do not need a deck to tell you that quoting is slow or that support eats three people.
What you do not have is the weeks to map it precisely, the experience to know which parts a model can carry, and someone to build it and stay until your team runs it.
A strategy engagement gives you a better description of a problem you could already describe.
Where the big firms are genuinely worth it
Getting a large organisation to agree. That is a real skill and it is most of what they are actually paid for.
Regulated environments, where the documentation and the process are part of the deliverable and being able to name the firm matters.
Programmes spanning many units, where the coordination is the hard part rather than the building.
The pilot problem
Large engagements tend to end in pilots. A pilot proves something is possible, which was rarely in doubt, and then needs a second budget to become real.
At your size that is a slow way to spend money. We would rather put one operation live and let it be judged on whether the number moved.
What you get in writing from us
The assessment is the strategy artefact, and it is deliberately short: how you get customers, how you deliver, how the place runs, and for each operation whether it can be automated and what it is worth.
It is written to be built from, by us or by anyone.
The same problem, run both ways
A production company where forty recurring questions a week land on the owner and the plant manager.
A large firm: a knowledge management workstream, an assessment of information architecture, and a recommendation to pilot an internal assistant next quarter.
The way we ran it: a system trained on their SOPs and the answers they had already given. The floor pulls it. The owner is off that loop.
Same diagnosis. One of them shipped.
So which one?
Choose Eleven Cloud if
- You want a working system rather than a roadmap
- You are owner-led and decisions do not need a committee
- You want the people who sold it to do the work
- You want it live in weeks
Choose A large consulting firm if
- You need to move a large organisation to a decision
- You are in a regulated market where the process is the product
- You need coordination across many business units
- A recognisable firm name carries weight with your board
A large consulting firm, answered
Do you produce a strategy document?
The assessment is one, written to be built from rather than presented.
Who actually does the work?
The people on the first call. There is no staffing model behind us that swaps in someone else after signature.
What if we need board-level material?
The assessment gives you the numbers per operation, which is usually what a board is asking for anyway.
Other comparisons
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Find out what your most expensive operation is
The assessment covers the whole company: how you get customers, how you deliver, and how the place runs. You get it in writing, and you can build from it with or without us.