AI consultant in Sandy Springs, from someone who has built with it.
I work with CEOs, boards and operating partners in Sandy Springs and around Perimeter Center on one question: where AI pays in this business, and how to get it into production with an owner and a number. I have built with it. As CEO of Product Genius I built and launched an AI engagement platform, as COO of Blameless I shipped a generative AI product used by Fortune 500 engineering teams, and at New Relic I launched New Relic AI. I still work at the bottom of the stack too: I run two inference servers of my own, so the advice tracks what the models can do this quarter, not what they could do last year.
My office is at North Point in Alpharetta, up GA-400 from Perimeter Center, so a workshop in Sandy Springs is a short drive, not a fly-in. Most of my AI work runs nationally. Here it can happen across a table, with Zoom between sessions.
The AI questions on the table in Sandy Springs.
Sandy Springs is home to corporate headquarters including UPS, Newell Brands, Inspire Brands and Mercedes-Benz USA’s corporate offices, and its largest employers include OneTrust, IBM, Intercontinental Exchange, VMware and Manheim, along with most of the office towers of Perimeter Center and Pill Hill, the largest medical center in Georgia. Headquarters, exchanges and hospitals run on high-volume, rule-bound work, and the regional offices, suppliers and service firms around them face the same AI questions with smaller budgets. The decisions leaders here bring me cluster in six places.
An AI answer for the board
The board wants a plan, the pilots work in the demo, and nothing has reached production. The answer is a ranked list of workloads with a number behind each, and the first one live inside a quarter. The board version is in the AI answer your board actually wants.
Which workloads pay first
Service, support, claims, billing and the back office: the flows your people re-type day after day. My rule is that any process you can model can be mostly automated, with the exceptions routed to a named person. The assessment ranks the candidates by cost and confidence.
Pilots stuck in the demo
A pilot has no owner and no exception path. The fix is to put the workload into production at a defined share of volume, route the exceptions to a person, and measure the share of volume that no longer touches a human queue.
The AI bill keeps growing
Licenses and agents bought last year, a bill that keeps climbing, and no one who can say what it returned. Mapping the workloads honestly has cut spend by 80 percent on some, with frontier models moved off work smaller models handle.
Rules before the data goes in
Healthcare, payments and corporate HR data carry rules about where data may go. Before a model touches customer, financial or employee data, one person owns three documents: which models run on what data, what each one may read, and a log of what it decided.
A sponsor’s plan on a clock
An operating partner with a value creation plan that names AI. One win found in one portfolio company, put into production and repeated across the others, measured in EBITDA inside the hold period. More on AI consulting for private equity.
Custom AI agents for Sandy Springs back offices, built in weeks.
Most companies in Sandy Springs have back-office work that is a poor use of their people’s time: re-keying between systems, chasing approvals and payments, checking documents, answering the same questions. An AI agent can take a large share of that work, so your people do the work you hired them for. The big firms quote months or years and hundreds of thousands of dollars for this. Most of what I build costs thousands or tens of thousands and runs in weeks.
Data entry between systems
Copying orders, contacts and updates from email, portals and spreadsheets into the CRM, the accounting system or the order system.
Invoices and payables
Reading invoices as they arrive, matching them to purchase orders and receipts, and flagging what does not match.
Collections and follow-up
Chasing overdue payments, missing paperwork and pending approvals by email and text, on schedule, in your voice.
Inbox and document intake
Sorting the shared inbox, pulling the data out of forms, contracts and scans, and routing each item to the right person.
Each agent runs against a baseline with named owners for its work, its access and the result. The exceptions, the judgment calls and anything it is unsure about go to a named person, with the context attached. How the builds work, and what they cost to run, is on custom AI agents.
Someone who has done the work, not a team that has studied it.
A consulting team brings a partner to the pitch and analysts to the work. Here the person who scopes it is the person in the room, building with your people and accountable for the result. The difference is not only the shape. It is what stands behind it.
The boardroom and the server room
I have sat in the boardroom as a CEO, a public-company founder and a Managing Partner, and built AI products as a CEO, a COO and a platform GM. I also run two inference servers of my own and work hands on with the models and how they are trained. The board-level call and the technical call get made by the same person, so nothing is lost in translation.
Hands on, with your people
The person on the scoping call is the person who builds it with your team, deployed inside your own systems. You are not paying for juniors to learn your business, and the capability stays when I leave.
Your data stays yours
Your data stays inside the systems you already control, and a model reads what the access rule permits and no more. One person in your company owns the record of which models run, on what, and what they decided.
No vendor in the room
I sell no software and take nothing from a vendor. If I ever advise a company I would recommend to you, I say so first.
A number the CFO can audit
Per workload: the share of volume that no longer touches a human queue, times what a unit of it cost before, against a baseline measured before the switch. Adoption is counted in volume, not in licenses or logins.
Three shapes of engagement, in person in Sandy Springs.
We pick the shape together on the scoping call, and it can change as the work does.
AI Assessment
A fixed-fee assessment of where AI pays in your business, ending in a written plan you can run with me, run yourself, or shelve. A small business, under 50 people, takes two weeks, remote with one session in person in Sandy Springs, from $3,500. A mid-market company, 50 people up to $1B in revenue, or any PE-backed company, takes four weeks at $15,000 per company. An enterprise is quoted after the scoping call. The fee credits in full toward an Adoption Sprint that starts within 90 days.
AI Adoption Sprint
One or two workloads into production inside one quarter, with owners, dates and a baseline measured before the switch is thrown. Your people build the muscle, and the first win funds the next one.
Fractional AI leadership
A fractional Chief AI Officer: executive ownership of the AI agenda across a company or a portfolio, on a monthly retainer, with a monthly line to the board or the operating partner, until someone inside passes the test or the right talent is hired.
What the assessment answers
- Where does AI pay in this business, ranked, with a number on each workload?
- Is the data ready: where does it live, and who owns it?
- Can the systems take it, and what has to connect to what?
- Which processes can be modeled, at what volume and unit cost, and where do the exceptions go?
- Are the people ready, and who owns each workload after I leave?
- What are the risks: governance, compliance and security?
- Build, buy or skip, and which vendors, if any?
- What is AI already costing you, in tools and spend without an owner?
- What happens in the next 90 days, and what does the board hear?
The output is a ranked plan, not a maturity score. The forty-five minute scoping call before it is free.
Perimeter Center, in person.
Sandy Springs, with 108,080 residents at the 2020 census, is the seventh most populous city in Georgia. One of its largest employers, Manheim, is a Cox Automotive company, and Cox Automotive is where I led the cloud and DevOps transformation. My office is a short drive up GA-400, so the standing cadence can be in person.
The record behind the work: an AI platform built and launched as CEO, a generative AI product used by Fortune 500 engineering teams, New Relic AI across two billion events a minute, and the cloud transformation inside Cox Automotive. And the outcome I point to most: a CEO with $25M in revenue, a one-time $50,000 investment in automating the flows his team re-typed day after day, and $250,000 of annual cost out.
The seats, not the theory
In the press
Featured in CNN, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Wired, Fast Company and the Atlanta Business Chronicle. See the coverage.
AI consulting in Sandy Springs: the questions people actually ask.
Do you work in person in Sandy Springs?
Yes. Workshops, working sessions and the board or operating-partner cadence in person in Sandy Springs and around Perimeter Center, at your office or in your boardroom, with Zoom between them when that is easier. My office is at North Point in Alpharetta, up GA-400.
What does an AI consultant actually do?
An AI consultant separates where AI pays in your business from where it does not yet. That means mapping real workloads, putting a number on each, and getting the first wins to production. The difference between AI consultants is what stands behind the map. Mine is having built and shipped AI products as an operator.
What does AI consulting cost?
The first step has a published price. The AI Assessment is from $3,500 for a small business under 50 people, $15,000 per company for a mid-market or PE-backed company, and quoted for an enterprise, and the fee credits in full toward an Adoption Sprint that starts within 90 days. The sprint carries a project fee with owners and dates, and fractional AI leadership is priced like the operating commitment it is. The forty-five minute scoping call before any of it is free, and the first workload is chosen so the savings are visible against the fee.
How much does a custom AI agent cost in Sandy Springs?
Most of what I build costs thousands or tens of thousands to build, and the running cost depends on the model choice; open models on your own server carry no per-use fee. A free call tells you straight whether an agent can take the workload, and gives you a rough plan for building it yourself or having my team build it.
Are you a firm, or one person?
One person, by design. The person on the scoping call is the person in the room and the person accountable for the result. Where the work needs more hands, your own team does it with me, which is how the capability stays in the company after I leave.
Do you work with corporate and regional offices in Sandy Springs?
Yes. A corporate office usually needs two answers: which workloads pay first in its own operation, and what the board hears. I have been the CEO of a public company and an executive inside large ones, so the board-level call and the technical call get made by the same person.
Do you work with PE-backed and founder-led companies in Sandy Springs?
Yes: AI diligence on targets, post-close AI value creation plans, portfolio-wide workload sweeps and exit readiness, for the sponsor and for the company. I spent a decade as a Managing Partner on the investing side, so the EBITDA lens is native, not adopted.
How long does it take?
The AI Assessment takes two weeks for a small business and four for a mid-market company. An adoption sprint puts one or two workloads into production inside one quarter, with owners and dates. Fractional AI leadership is an ongoing seat. Data readiness is what adds time, which is why the assessment asks the data question first, before a date is set.
Do you work with companies outside Sandy Springs?
Yes. Most of my AI work runs nationally, remotely and on-site. In Sandy Springs the in-person sessions are a short drive from my office.
Bring me one workload, or the whole portfolio.
Forty-five minutes, no pressure, no pitch. Bring the AI question that is actually on your desk, and we will work out together whether you need an assessment, a sprint, a seat, or a custom AI agent built in weeks, not months or years, and whether I am the right one. In person in Sandy Springs or on Zoom.
- Send the note, or book the call if you would rather pick a time.
- Forty-five minutes, on video or across a table in Sandy Springs.
- A scope and a number if it makes sense to work together, and a straight no if it does not.
Or reach me directly:
(629) 304-8755
ken@kengavranovic.com
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