Founders hear “AI” and picture magic. Engineers hear “AI” and picture cost, latency, and edge cases. The useful middle is knowing when a plain rule is enough.
Use simple automation when - The rule is clear: “If invoice is unpaid 7 days after due date, email reminder.” - Inputs are structured: status fields, dates, amounts. - A wrong action is expensive and should never be fuzzy.
Examples: payment reminders, assigning a lead to a territory, creating a task when a form is submitted.
Use AI when - The input is messy language or documents. - You need a draft, summary, or classification a human will check. - Rules would take hundreds of brittle if-else branches.
Examples: summarising a long client brief, suggesting a category for an open-ended enquiry, extracting fields from a scanned PDF.
A quick decision test Ask: “If this is wrong 1 in 20 times, can a human catch it easily?” If yes, AI may be fine. If a wrong invoice amount or legal clause slips through, keep it rule-based or fully human.
Best of both Many strong systems use rules for the backbone and AI for the messy edges - then write the result back into your CRM or portal.
We design automation that way on purpose: reliable workflows first, AI where it earns its keep. Explore Automation & AI or get in touch.