Enterprise AI automation assumes you have engineers, budgets, and time. Small teams have none of that.

Here’s what actually works when you’re scrappy.

The Small Team Reality

Big companies automate with custom APIs, dedicated platforms, and full-time automation engineers.

Small teams automate with Zapier, prompts in Claude, and whoever has time on Friday afternoon.

That’s not a disadvantage. It’s focus. You automate the things that matter most.

Five Automations Worth Building

1. Customer Support Triage

The problem: Support emails piling up. No time to categorize and prioritize.

The solution:

• Emails hit Zapier
• Zapier sends to Claude API
• Claude categorizes: urgent/normal, topic, suggested response
• Results populate a simple dashboard

Setup time: 2-3 hours Cost: $30-50/month in API calls Time saved: 5-10 hours/week

2. Meeting Summary Distribution

The problem: Meeting notes don’t get written or shared.

The solution:

• Record meetings (Otter, Zoom recording, whatever)
• Transcript goes to Claude
• Claude extracts: decisions, action items, key points
• Summary auto-shared to Slack/email

Setup time: 1-2 hours Cost: $20-30/month Time saved: 3-5 hours/week

3. Content First Draft Generation

The problem: Blog posts, social updates, newsletters take forever.

The solution:

• Topic and outline in a form
• Zapier triggers Claude
• First draft appears in your CMS
• Human edits and publishes

Setup time: 2-3 hours Cost: $10-20/month Time saved: 5-8 hours/week

4. Lead Qualification

The problem: Can’t tell good leads from tire-kickers.

The solution:

• Form submissions hit Zapier
• Claude analyzes against your ideal customer profile
• Scores leads: hot/warm/cold
• Hot leads get instant Slack notification

Setup time: 2-4 hours Cost: $20-30/month Time saved: 2-3 hours/week

5. Report Generation

The problem: Weekly/monthly reports take forever to compile.

The solution:

• Data exports from your tools (can be manual or automated)
• Claude summarizes trends, highlights anomalies
• Report formatted and ready for review

Setup time: 3-4 hours Cost: $15-25/month Time saved: 4-6 hours/week

The No-Code Stack

You don’t need engineers for any of this:

Zapier: Connects everything. $29/month handles most small team needs.

Claude API: The AI brain. Pay per use, usually $50-100/month for active automation. Anthropic has made pricing pretty reasonable.

Google Sheets: The poor man’s database. Good enough for most small team data.

Airtable (free tier): When you need something slightly more structured than sheets.

Make (formerly Integromat): Cheaper Zapier alternative if you’re technical.

Common Mistakes

Over-automating too fast: Start with one automation. Perfect it. Then add another.

Skipping the manual phase: Run the process manually first. Understand it. Then automate.

No human checkpoints: AI makes mistakes. Build in review points for anything customer-facing.

Complex flows: If your Zapier flow has 10 steps, it will break. Simpler is better.

Real ROI Calculation

Let’s say you’re a team of 5, each making $60/hour equivalent.

Time saved: 20 hours/week across team Value: $1,200/week, $4,800/month

Cost: $200/month in tools and API

ROI: 24x

Even if I’m off by half, that’s still 12x return. And this is conservative.

Where to Start

1. List your top 5 time-wasting repetitive tasks
2. Pick the most annoying one
3. Map the current manual process
4. Build the automation (start simple)
5. Run parallel (manual + automated) for a week
6. Trust the automation, add human checkpoints
7. Move to the next task

One automation at a time. Compound the savings.

The Mindset Shift

Big companies ask: “How do we automate everything?”

Small teams should ask: “What’s the one thing we should never have to do manually again?”

Focus beats comprehensiveness. Automate the painful things first. The rest can wait.