How do I choose an AI operations consultant?

Ask five questions before hiring anyone. Do they understand your kind of business rather than just automation? Do they map your processes before naming a tool? Do they work with the systems you already have? Do they build systems your team can run without them, with no custom code or developer dependency? Is the fee fixed and agreed before work starts?

Operations consulting · London · UK

AI operations consultant for UK founders and professional services firms

Q: What does an AI operations consultant actually do?

An AI operations consultant analyses how a business actually operates, identifies the tasks that are highest-volume and lowest-expertise, puts a financial number on what those tasks cost annually, and builds the automations that eliminate or reduce them. The deliverable is working automations, not strategy decks or tool recommendations.

10PM · Anne Peire · London, UK

I'm Anne Peire, an AI operations consultant based in London. I help founders and professional services firms identify where time is being lost, remove operational friction, and automate the repetitive work that should never require human expertise.

Most of the founders and professionals I work with are not short of ambition or skill. They are short of time, because a significant part of every week disappears into work that does not require their expertise: admin, follow-ups, manual data entry, status updates, invoicing, onboarding. The kind of work that is always urgent enough to do but never valuable enough to justify doing yourself.

That is the problem 10PM exists to solve.

What an AI operations consultant actually does

The term covers a lot of ground. In practice, what I do is specific: I analyse how a business actually operates, identify the tasks that are highest-volume and lowest-expertise, put a financial number on what those tasks cost annually, and then build the automations that eliminate or reduce them.

This is not generic AI consulting. I do not sell strategy decks or tool recommendations. I deliver working automations: systems that run without you, built and tested in two to three weeks, handed over with documentation.

The tools depend on what the business already uses and what the problem actually is: Make, Zapier, n8n, HubSpot, Notion, Airtable, digital signature tools, AI assisted document generation. The right tool is the one that solves the specific problem. The diagnosis comes first.

Who I work with

The work creates the clearest value for:

Founders and CEOs of businesses between 1 and 50 people where admin is eating leadership time
Solicitors and legal professionals running their own practice or operating as consultant solicitors
Independent consultants and advisors whose time bills at £150 or more per hour
Agency founders managing multiple clients with repetitive onboarding, reporting and billing cycles
Professional services firms where processes exist but have never been properly systematised

The common denominator is not the sector. It is the pattern: valuable expertise being consumed by work that a well-configured system could handle.

Background

I spent more than 15 years in enterprise B2B technology, in leadership roles at Fountain, Soldo and through Adap.tv's acquisition chain. I have worked at both ends of the scale problem: inside fast-growing SaaS companies, and as a founder building something from scratch.

That experience on both sides is what makes the diagnostic useful. I know what operational friction looks like from the inside, and I know which automations create durable value versus which ones look good on paper and break in practice.

My framework for the hire or automate decision featured as a full page article in London Business Matters, the magazine of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (July/August 2026).

How it works

Free 15 min review

A quick conversation about how your week actually works. By the end, you will know whether there is a time leak worth diagnosing. No pitch. No obligation.

The Time Leak Audit: £950

A structured diagnostic of your operation. Under two hours of your time. You leave with a clear map of where time is going, the annual financial cost, and the top three to five opportunities ranked by impact. More about the Audit.

Sprint: price discussed after the Audit

Two to three weeks. I build the automations from the diagnostic. Real workflows, tested, documented and handed over. The work that took hours now runs by itself.

How to choose an AI operations consultant

Ask these five questions before you hire anyone, including me.

Do they understand your kind of business, or just automation? Onboarding a legal client is not onboarding an agency client. If they cannot describe your workflow back to you, keep looking.
Do they map your processes before naming a tool? The workflow is the problem more often than the software. Anyone who opens with a product demo is selling that product, not solving your problem.
Do they work with the systems you already have? You have paid for your CRM and your practice or project management tools. The right consultant makes them earn their keep instead of proposing a migration.
Do they build things your team can run without them? No custom code, no developer dependency, no system only the consultant understands. If it breaks the day they leave, you rented a fix, you did not buy one.
Is the fee fixed and agreed before work starts? A defined project with a defined price. Open-ended day rates are how small problems become long engagements.

10PM is built to pass this test. The Time Leak Audit is £950, fixed, and takes under two hours of your time. If the answer is that you do not need automation, the audit says so.

London-based, working across the UK

I am based in London and work with founders and professionals across the UK. Engagements are primarily remote: the diagnostic conversation, the analysis, and the Sprint delivery all work without needing to be in the same room. Where it is useful to meet in person, I am based in London.

For founders and professionals outside London, the geography does not change the process or the outcome. The work is location-independent. The results are not.

Start with 15 minutes.

Tell me how your week actually works and I will tell you whether there is a problem worth fixing, and what it is likely costing you.

Book a free 15 min review