IThe wrong first project
The default suggestion is a chat widget on the website. It is the most visible option and usually the least valuable: it answers questions that a well-written page already answers, and it introduces a new way to be wrong in public.
The valuable work is behind the scenes, where nobody is watching and the same task happens forty times a week.
IIWhere it earns its keep
Reading an inbox and turning enquiries into structured records. Extracting line items from supplier invoices. Drafting the first version of a quote from a job's parameters. Summarising a week of bookings into the three things the owner needs to look at.
Each of these has a clear input, a checkable output, and a human who approves before anything leaves the building.
IIIThe two rules
Keep a person in the loop wherever the output reaches a customer or moves money. Automation that drafts is useful immediately; automation that sends needs to have earned it.
And measure the thing it replaced. If the task took four hours a week and now takes one, that is the result. If nobody measured before, the project has no way to be judged and will be argued about instead.
IVWhere it fits the system
AI is a feature of the system, not a product beside it. It reads the same database, respects the same permissions and writes to the same records. Bolted on separately, it becomes another place the truth is kept — which is the problem the system was built to solve.