Choosing a partner
How to choose an AI integration company
"AI company" covers four different kinds of business. The right one depends on whether you want advice, capacity, a quick app connector, or a working tool built inside your systems.
Search "AI integration companies" and you get a mix of enterprise consultancies, offshore development shops, no-code automation agencies, and small builder-operators, all under one label. They do not do the same job, and they do not cost the same. Here is how to tell them apart before you spend a dollar.
The field
Four kinds of AI company
Each is the right answer for some jobs. None is right for all of them.
- 01
Enterprise consultancies
The large firms (the ones you already know by name). Strategy decks, readiness assessments, big transformation programs.
Good at: Deep benches, board-level credibility, and the scale for a company-wide program.
Watch for: They advise and staff; the building is often subcontracted or handed to your team. Priced for the enterprise, and rarely close to the actual work.
- 02
Offshore development shops
Larger dev firms that will build what you spec, usually with an account manager here and the engineers elsewhere.
Good at: Capacity and price per hour. Good when you have a tight spec and can manage the build.
Watch for: You own the spec, the review, and the risk. Time-zone and context gaps show up in the details. When a tool touches your money, the details are exactly where it has to be right.
- 03
No-code automation agencies
The newer "AI automation agency" shops wiring together tools like Zapier, Make, and n8n.
Good at: Fast and cheap for lightweight, low-stakes flows between apps that already have connectors.
Watch for: The automation lives in a third-party platform you rent, not in your systems. It breaks when a screen or an API changes, and it rarely reaches inside an ERP.
- 04
Builder-operators
Small teams that run their own operating companies and build AI into them, then do the same for yours. This is where Throughline sits.
Good at: The person scoping the work is the person building it, inside the software you already run, priced as a fixed fee you keep. They have felt the problem, so they know which chores are worth automating.
Watch for: Small teams take fewer clients and cannot staff a hundred-person program. If you need a company-wide transformation office, that is a consultancy job.
The honest version
Where we fit
We are a builder-operator, and we are not the right call for every job.
Throughline is a small team of builders inside Keller Group. We build AI into our own operating companies first, then do the same for other businesses.
The closest thing we have to a brochure is the rebate-and-margin tool we built inside Kelsan, a multi-state distributor in our own group. It reads the rebate terms in the distributor’s contracts and checks every line item against them, every day, inside its Epicor P21 ERP. It has recovered over $100,000 in margin the manual process was missing. It is one of the production systems we built and run, by a team of two or three.
If you want a company-wide transformation office or a hundred engineers, hire a consultancy. If you want one working tool for one expensive chore, built inside your systems and handed to your team, that is us.
FAQ
Before you pick a partner
What do AI integration companies actually do?
They connect an AI model to the software a business already runs, so it can read real documents and update real records instead of answering questions in a chat window. The work spans scoping which tasks are worth automating, building the tool, wiring it into your systems, and keeping a person on sign-off for anything that changes a record.
How do I choose an AI partner?
Match the provider to the job. For a company-wide strategy, a large consultancy fits. For a lightweight app-to-app flow, a no-code agency is cheap and fast. For a working tool built inside your ERP or accounting system that your team keeps, a builder-operator is the closest fit. Ask any of them to price the actual work and to name what they have already shipped.
What should an AI integration project cost?
It depends on the work, which is why a good partner prices it after looking, not before. Throughline starts every engagement with a fixed $7,500 AI Capability Audit that returns a build-or-don’t-build verdict and a written spec you keep either way. The build itself is a separate fixed fee, agreed before work starts.
Should I build or buy?
Buy when a product already handles the work well; the general cases many businesses share are usually cheaper off the shelf. Build when the process is specific to you, valuable enough that doing it by hand costs real money, and rule-bound enough that a tool can do most of it. A partner worth hiring will tell you when buying is the smarter move.
Start here
Not sure which you need?
The audit is the cheapest way to find out. It looks at the actual work, prices a build, and tells you whether to build, buy, or leave it alone.
$7,500, fixedfixed durationa verdict you keep either way