What a local model can and cannot do for a 12-person company
A client of twelve people asked one question: can we run AI on documents without sending them anywhere? We spent a quarter finding out.
The setup was a small local model on one office machine, wired into the same n8n flows that already handled their mail and quotes.
What held up
Summarising, sorting and extracting fields from documents. Reading a delivery note and putting the numbers in the right place worked on the first day and kept working.
Nothing left the building. For a company that handles other people's floor plans, that was the whole point.
What did not
Anything that needed judgement across several documents at once. The model lost the thread and answered confidently about the wrong file.
Writing to customers also failed. The tone was close but never right, and editing took longer than writing.
What it cost
One machine, two days of setup and about half a day a month of maintenance. Cheaper than the subscription it replaced, more expensive in attention.
Would we do it again
Yes, for document work with a privacy reason behind it. No, as a general assistant. A local model is a tool for one job, not a replacement for a platform.
See where the gains are.
Ready for your first small step?
Book an intro call with Senne. No strings attached.
Either way you leave with a few concrete pointers.
