AI implementation partner
An AI implementation partner is the specialist you add alongside your IT supplier for systems whose output is a judgement, not a calculation. Crux Digits takes one process from audit to production and hands over code, models and evaluation set.
You already have an IT supplier, or an internal IT team, or both. An AI implementation partner is not a replacement for either. It is the specialist you add for one thing your existing supplier does not carry: a system whose output is a judgement rather than a calculation, and which therefore has to be evaluated, monitored and governed differently from every other application in your estate.
Last updated: 29 October 2026
Crux Digits is an AI partner, not an ICT partner. We do not take over your infrastructure, your service desk or your systems management, and we do not want to. We arrive next to the supplier you already have, take one process from audit to production, and hand over the code, the models and the evaluation set. What changes in your IT organisation is narrow and specific, and this page sets it out: who owns the model, who owns the evaluation set, who receives the incident, and who signs off a change that alters a model's behaviour without a release.
Adding a specialist to an existing landscape
What changes, and what does not
Five steps. Your existing supplier keeps everything that is already theirs.
The landscape you already run
Your IT supplier or internal team owns infrastructure, the workplace and the service desk. None of that changes.
One process, costed
One to two weeks: the process measured, the data checked, a return per opportunity and an EU AI Act judgement per idea.
The proof it is still right
Real cases with the answer your own experts agree on. Without that set nobody can see a model drift.
Inside your standards
On your data, behind your identity provider, connected through the interfaces you already maintain.
Code, models and runbook
You receive everything needed to run it yourselves or to hand it to a different supplier.
What an AI implementation partner does, and what your IT supplier keeps doing
| Responsibility | Your IT supplier or internal team | The AI implementation partner |
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure, network, workplace, service desk | Owns it, unchanged | No role |
| Application landscape and integrations | Owns the estate and the standards | Builds to those standards and to the interfaces you already expose |
| The model and its behaviour | Usually has no basis to judge it | Owns it: selection, prompts or training, versioning and rollback |
| The evaluation set | Rarely exists before an AI project | Builds it with your people and hands it over, because it is what proves the system still works |
| An incident where the output is wrong but nothing is down | Not a category in most SLAs | Triage sits here, because the fix is a model or data change rather than a restart |
| Change control | Owns the process | Supplies the evidence a change advisory board needs to approve a model change |
| Security and access | Owns policy and identity | Works inside it: your identity provider, your roles, your retention rules |
What a technical AI implementation consultant leaves behind
Judge the engagement by what survives it, not by who attends the meetings. Four things should be in your hands at the end, and a project that cannot produce them has not been implemented, it has been demonstrated.
- The working system, in your environment. Running against your data, in your tenant, behind your identity provider, integrated with the systems it needs (AFAS, Exact, an ERP, a WMS or TMS, an EPD, a case management system) through the interfaces you already maintain. For an older ERP, see integrating AI with your existing ERP.
- The evaluation set. A held-out set of real cases with the answer your own experts agree on. Without it nobody can tell a model that has drifted from a model that is fine, and every future discussion becomes an argument about impressions.
- The runbook. What to check weekly, what the thresholds are, what to do when one is crossed, and who to call. Short enough that your own second-line reads it.
- The code, the prompts and the model configuration. In your repository, under your licence, with the documentation. You should be able to hand the whole thing to a different supplier and have them continue.
Where two suppliers go wrong, and how to prevent it
Nearly every failure we are called in to repair is a boundary problem rather than a technical one. Four of them account for most of it, and all four are settled in an hour before the project starts rather than in a meeting after it breaks.
- Nobody owns the evaluation set. The AI supplier built it, the IT department never took it over, and six months later nobody can say whether quality has moved. Name an owner inside your organisation on day one, not a supplier.
- The incident has no queue. Your service desk categorises by availability, and a model that answers confidently and wrongly is available. Add the category before go-live and agree what evidence a ticket must carry: the input, the output, the expected output.
- A model changes without a release. A provider updates the underlying model, or a prompt is tuned, and behaviour shifts with no change record. Decide whether that is a change under your own process. Usually it is, and then it needs a version, a note and an evaluation run.
- Exit is not written down. Ask at the start what leaving looks like: which artefacts you receive, in what format, and how long the supplier supports a handover. A partner who cannot answer cleanly is selling dependency.
What to ask an AI implementation partner before you sign
Five questions, and the answers are checkable rather than reassuring.
- What have you put into production, not piloted? Ask for the number the client measured, and ask what it was before.
- How do you evaluate the system, and who holds that evidence afterwards? If evaluation is a demo rather than a set, there is nothing to monitor against.
- What does this cost to run per month, and what happens if we stop paying you? If the honest answer is that it degrades, the build price was never the price.
- How will you work with our existing supplier? A partner who wants to route around your IT department is creating a second estate for you to manage.
- What would make you say AI is not the answer here? A supplier who has never said it is selling technology rather than an outcome.
Our audit is built to be judged on exactly these. See what to ask before you hire an AI consultant and our thirteen published cases.
Three fixed steps, fixed prices, your code
AI audit and strategy, EUR 2,500: one to two weeks. Your processes and data checked against what you actually run, use cases ranked by return, an EU AI Act and GDPR judgement per idea, and a plan another supplier could execute. Production-ready MVP, EUR 20,000: four to six weeks, working on your own data. Production, from EUR 50,000: integrated, secured, monitored and handed over with the evaluation set and all source code. Prices exclude VAT, and the audit is credited in full if you continue within 60 days. For the service itself see AI implementation services, and for cost and duration see AI implementation in the Netherlands. Once a system we built is live, managed AI support covers monitoring and improvements to that system at a published monthly price. It covers what we built, not your wider IT estate.
- KvK 87456346Registered in the Dutch Handelsregister
- Since 2022Crux Digits B.V., Utrecht region
- 13 casesPublished, each with its own number
AI Predictive Maintenance for Industrial Plants
What we found. Run-to-failure maintenance meant recurring, unplanned stoppages that cost output and forced expensive emergency repairs. The producer needed early warning of failures so work could be scheduled into planned windows instead of triggered by a breakdown.
Real result from a Crux Digits engagement; client name withheld pending permission.
Frequently asked questions
What does an AI implementation partner do?
How is that different from our ICT partner?
Does Crux Digits replace our IT supplier?
What does an AI implementation project cost?
Will you work with our existing supplier?
Who fixes it when the system gets something wrong?
Bring us in next to the supplier you already have
A free 30 minute call: you describe the process and your current landscape, we tell you whether AI pays off there and what the first step costs.
Book a free consultation →