Claude consulting, for businesses that actually have to run on it.

What a consultant does that a subscription does not

The subscription is Claude. What it does not include is anyone who knows your business. A Claude consultant does three things the subscription cannot.

• Configuration. Setting Claude up for your systems and your standards: the connectors to the tools you already run, the projects and the skill and prompt libraries that hold how your business does the work, and the review steps that make an output safe to act on.
• Workflow design. Deciding which work moves to Claude first, what the handoff between Claude and a person looks like, and where the output goes once it exists.
• Adoption. Getting the people who do the work to use it every day. That usually means training on their own tasks in the Claude desktop app, and a few weeks of adjustment after the first version ships.

IT setup comes with every engagement: accounts, access, and the desktop app on each person's machine. It is rarely the hard part, but someone has to own it.

When you need one, and when you don't

Not every business that has Claude needs help with it. The honest test is whether the problem is Claude or the business. Claude problems are cheap to solve with a subscription and some reading. Business problems, where the work itself has to change shape, are what a consultant is for.

You probably do not need a consultant if:

• One or two people are using Claude for their own work and are happy with it. A subscription and an afternoon of reading covers that.
• The work you want to move is a single task with a single owner who has the time to figure it out. That person will do a better job than a consultant would, because they know the task.
• You have not yet decided that Claude is worth the team's time. A consultant cannot make that decision for you.

You probably do if:

• The work crosses people or systems: intake that touches three tools, a month-end close that involves four people, onboarding that runs across two platforms.
• Claude is installed and nobody uses it, or one person uses it and nobody else can.
• The output has to be right every time, and someone has to own the review step.
• You can name the problem, and nobody inside the business has the hours to build the fix.

How Shannon works

Adopt is for the business that knows AI matters and does not yet know where to start. We train the team on its own work, audit the workflows across the business, and map what to move to Claude first. Consulting runs from kickoff to handoff, and the map usually points at a specific problem worth building for.

Build is for a specific problem that needs a working system. We scope it, build it, test it against your real inputs, and hand it over running, with the skill libraries, prompt libraries, and user guides yours to keep. A typical Build engagement runs four to six weeks; the binding timeline is in the proposal.

If you run a small business, the small-business page covers the workflows we see most often: reconciliation, overdue invoices, the month-end close, and the Monday-morning brief.

What it costs

Pricing is by proposal. There is no rate card, because the shape of an engagement varies more than the hours do. What you can expect:

• An intro call at no charge, to find out whether the problem is one we can help with.
• A written proposal with a fixed scope, a timeline, and a price for that scope.
• An engagement with a kickoff and a handoff, not an open-ended arrangement.
• Most clients come back for the next workflow once the first one is running, because the first one surfaces it. That is a new, scoped proposal.

How to choose a consultant

Three things to check before you hire anyone, us included: whether the firm is in the Claude Partner Network directory and at what tier, how many of its people hold Anthropic's Claude Certified Architect credential, and whether it can name a client of your size with real numbers. Our buyer's guide walks through those and four more, with what a good answer sounds like for each.