AI Consultant for Singapore SMEs: Free 30-Minute Review
Cortex Lab AI is a Singapore AI consultancy for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). Our AI consulting starts with a free 30-minute consultation that looks at how your business runs today and identifies where AI would deliver a measurable return, and where it would not be worth the spend. You receive a written assessment either way.
If your team has paid for software it stopped using within a month, you have good reason to be wary of an AI consultant. You should not take the value on faith, and we do not ask you to. The consultation answers one question with your own figures: would this pay for itself? When the answer is no, we say so in writing.
What does an AI consultant do for an SME?
An AI consultant works out which parts of your business AI can handle reliably, what that would cost, and whether the saving justifies it. For an SME, that usually means the repetitive work between your tools and your customers: enquiries answered by hand, reports rebuilt every week, details copied from one system into another.
A good consultant also tells you where AI is the wrong answer. Some work is too irregular, too low in volume or too dependent on judgement to automate at a profit. A template, a checklist or a setting in software you already pay for often does the job for less.
Our AI consulting does not have to stop at advice. The same team that writes your assessment can train your staff and build the automations, inside the tools you already license.
What happens in the free 30-minute consultation?
We spend 30 minutes on how your business operates today and where your team's time goes. You then receive a written assessment of where AI would deliver a return and where it would not.
Bring a rough idea of the tasks your team repeats most and how long they take. Estimates are enough at this stage. If you go ahead, we turn them into a measured baseline, the figures any change is checked against, before any work begins.
Book a free 30-minute consultation.
Is this the same as an AI readiness assessment?
It covers the same ground, starting from the work rather than from a score. The AI Readiness Index (AIRI), first developed by AI Singapore, is one example. Its current version scores an organisation across five areas, including leadership and culture, business value, data and infrastructure, and AI Singapore's website offers a free 20-minute assessment. That is useful if you want a benchmark.
A consultation that starts from the work asks narrower questions. Which tasks, how often, how long they take, and what a mistake would cost. A business can score low on a readiness index and still have one task worth automating next month. A business that scores high can still have nothing that would pay back this year.
What does the written assessment cover?
It sets out where AI would deliver a measurable return in your business, and where it would not be worth the spend. The assessment is yours to keep, whether or not you work with us afterwards.
What happens after the assessment?
Nothing, unless you decide it should. The assessment is the first of four steps, and you can stop at any one of them.
| Step | What it is | More detail |
|---|---|---|
| 01 Find where AI fits | The free consultation and written assessment | This page |
| 02 Train your team | Practical training on the AI tools you already license | AI training for teams |
| 03 Automate the repetition | Automations for repetitive manual work, such as enquiry replies, recurring reports and data copied between systems | AI integration and workflow automation |
| 04 Run on AI | AI connected to your systems, your data and your customers, built into daily operations and owned outright by you | WhatsApp AI chatbot, for the customer side |
Before any build starts, we record your baseline, such as hours spent, volumes handled and error rates. The change then shows up in your own figures.
Step 3 can be small. A building maintenance manager with a team of five technicians used to read fault reports across several chat groups and check each technician's schedule before assigning a job. We brought the reports into one list and built one dashboard showing who is free and qualified, so a job is assigned in one step. By the manager's own count, that saves about 1 hour a day, roughly 5 hours a week. The building maintenance job dispatch case study has the detail.
Why do most organisations get no return from AI?
Usually because of how the project was run. MIT Project NANDA's report, The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business, 2025, found that 95% of organisations were getting zero return from their investment in generative AI (AI that writes text or creates images). It drew on a review of over 300 publicly disclosed AI initiatives, interviews with representatives of 52 organisations and survey responses from 153 senior leaders. It found the same divide among small and medium-sized businesses as among large enterprises. The authors conclude that the divide "does not seem to be driven by model quality or regulation, but seems to be determined by approach." Of the enterprise AI systems organisations evaluated, they say most "fail due to brittle workflows, lack of contextual learning, and misalignment with day-to-day operations."
Three habits address those causes, whoever you work with.
- Write down the number first. Record a baseline before work begins, using your own figures. We do this before every build.
- Start small. Begin with the smallest change that pays for itself. Add the next piece only once the last one has held up in real use.
- Hand over properly. Name an owner on your side, write down who is told when something breaks, and keep the baseline figures, so any drop shows up as a number.
What our AI consulting will not do
- No 60-slide strategy decks. The most expensive AI projects we see are the ones with the longest slide decks.
- No AI where it will not pay. If the honest answer is that a process should stay manual, the assessment says so.
- No staff reduction plans. We automate the repetitive part of a job so your team spends its hours on the part that needs a person.
- No lock-in. You own the work outright. It runs in tools you already pay for, with no layer of ours you would have to keep licensing.
- No grant promises. We are not a pre-approved vendor for Enterprise Singapore's EDGE Grant. Our guide to the EDGE grant for AI projects explains what the grant covers, so read it before counting on funding.
- No legal advice. We work to the PDPA, Singapore's privacy law, but we are not lawyers. For a legal decision about your customers' data, ask a lawyer.
How do AI consulting firms in Singapore differ?
Mostly by the size of client they are built for and what you are left with at the end. Large firms are set up for enterprise programmes. Small consultancies are set up for an SME that wants one working change before it commits to a strategy.
| Type of firm | Usually suits | What you typically receive | Ask them |
|---|---|---|---|
| Global strategy and technology firms | Large organisations running an enterprise-wide programme | Strategy, operating-model design and large delivery teams | Whether the people in the pitch are the people who will build it |
| IT systems integrators | Companies replacing or connecting core systems such as ERP, the main software that runs finance and operations | A scoped technology project | Whether AI is the goal or an add-on to a larger system sale |
| Software vendors and their partners | Businesses that have already chosen one platform | Set-up of that vendor's product | Whether they would recommend a different tool if it fitted better |
| Independent AI consultants | Owners who want one person's advice | Advice, sometimes small builds | Who maintains the work if that person is unavailable |
| Small AI consultancies, including us | SMEs that want a measurable change in the tools they already use | An assessment, team training and automations you own | What they measure before starting, and what they would tell you not to buy |
Questions to ask any AI consultant
Use these with us or with anyone else.
- What will you measure before you start, and how will we see the result afterwards?
- Which of our processes would you advise us not to automate, and why?
- Who builds it, and who do we contact when it breaks?
- Does it run in tools we already pay for, or in a platform we must keep licensing from you?
- Is our data used to train any AI model? Will you put the answer in writing?
- What happens when it gets something wrong, and who on our side is told?
- What will it cost to run each month after handover?
- Can we stop after the first step without a penalty?
Who you would be working with
Cortex Lab AI is a Singapore consultancy led by its founders, Darrel Liew (CEO) and Edward Tang (CTO). We train teams at multinational companies (MNCs) and SMEs, and the largest team we have trained had more than 40 people. We were a finalist in an IMDA Open Innovation Platform challenge for the National University Hospital (NUH). IMDA is Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority.
We build inside tools our clients already license, including Microsoft, Google Workspace, Notion, Salesforce, HubSpot and WhatsApp, and we work to the same PDPA obligations you do.
Do you need an AI consultant at all?
Not always. You can save the fee in three cases.
- You already know the one task you want handled, and a ready-made tool does it well. Buy the tool. A consultant adds cost and little else.
- Your team has not yet used the AI features in software you already pay for. Training is often the cheaper first step.
- The work is low in volume or changes every month. Automating it will cost more to maintain than it saves.
AI consulting also does not suit a business looking for a headcount cut. That is not what we sell.
Our guide to AI for Singapore SMEs covers where to start without outside help. The consultation answers the same question for your business, in 30 minutes, at no cost.
Frequently asked questions
How much does an AI consultant cost in Singapore?
Our first consultation is free and takes 30 minutes. Fees across the market vary widely with the type of firm. Before you commit, ask any consultant, including us, for a fixed quote and the monthly running cost in writing.
Is the free consultation really free?
Yes. You keep the written assessment, and you can stop there.
Do we need a technical team to work with an AI consultant?
No. We do the building. Your side needs someone who knows how the work runs today.
Will you tell us if AI is not worth it for our business?
Yes, in writing. Finding where AI would not be worth the spend is as much a part of the consultation as finding where it would.
How do we know it will work outside a demo?
Compare it with the baseline. We record your figures before any work begins, so you can see what changed in real use and decide whether to carry on.
Sources, checked on 5 October 2026: MIT Project NANDA, The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business, 2025 (July 2025; PDF copy hosted by MLQ.ai); AI Singapore, AI Readiness Index (AIRI).