Every AI Pitch Starts the Same Way. First We Clean Up Twenty Years of Your Files.

That is the expensive half, and it is the wrong place to start.

Split the work in two.

The first half is deciding how information gets created from here forward. What a complete quote contains before it leaves. What has to be filled in before an order releases. Where the current drawing lives and who is allowed to change it. Who owns the customer list and the part numbers.

That half looks like the cheap one, and it is the one that needs the most judgment. If somebody in the building already knew how to capture this properly, there would be nothing to clean up in the first place. Setting it up so it is genuinely useful later, without burying people in forms nobody fills in, takes someone who has done it before.

The second half is the history. Extraction, cleanup and migration of what you already have.

Do the second before the first and you are mopping the floor while the pipe is still leaking. Move forward based upon today's information, not the past.

Stop the leak. Then decide what the history is actually worth.

In practice, the first half can start small. Pick the three records that matter most, such as quotes, orders, and drawings, and agree on what complete looks like for each. Then apply it only to new work. The history can wait until you know which parts of it anyone actually uses.

If you are not sure which half you are in the middle of, reach out to us. Email us at info@devconsultantsllc.com or call (201) 540-7762.