Four ways to clear the queue. Not all of them are us.
Hire someone. Give your team ChatGPT. Build it yourself. Or hand it to us.
ALL FOUR ARE SOMETIMES THE RIGHT ANSWER.
Side by side, row by row.
One row per thing your finance and audit teams will ask. Read each row across. The last row shows where each one breaks.
| /01Hire a personA hire, or overtime on the team you have. | /02Give the team ChatGPTA chat window, and someone pasting into it. | /03Build it yourselfYour own engineers, AI models and on-call rota. | /04Surehand (us)Agents we build and run for you, under rules you sign. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time to first result | A hiring round, plus notice | Same day | Months | Set in the teardown |
| How cost grows | Salary, fixed and rising | Flat, per seat | Large up front, then upkeep | Agreed in the teardown |
| Copes with more work | No. You hire again | Only as fast as people type | Yes, while maintained | Yes |
| Runs unattended | No | No. A person has to paste | Yes | Yes |
| Handles odd cases | Yes. That is the job | Yes, if asked well | As far as you coded for | Yes, or it holds |
| A record you can hand an auditor | Notes, if any were kept | No record you can hand over | Logs, which seldom count as evidence | A record with the evidence and who approved |
| A hard limit on spending | Policy and judgement | None | Only if you built one | Checked before each action runs |
| When it is not sure | They ask someone | It answers anyway | Only if you built a hold | It stops and waits for your approver |
| Who is accountable | The person | Nobody, in practice | The team that built it | Named in the record |
| If it ends | What they knew leaves with them | Nothing to keep | You keep it all, and the upkeep | You take the record, in open formats |
| Where it breaks first | Volume, and holidays | Consistent answers, and proof | Upkeep, once the build is done | A process nobody wrote down |
Red marks where the agent stops for a person.
How the cost grows
No number without your volume. But you can see how each cost grows. A hire adds cost one whole person at a time. That cost stays the same in a quiet month.
The cheaper option depends on how many cases need a person. The teardown measures exactly that. For more, read How much does an AI agent cost?
Pick something else if. Or pick us.
For a lot of work, one of the other three wins. Here is when.
Hire a person if
The value is that a human is on the other end, as with key accounts, negotiations and delicate talks. An agent would lose that. Hire too if the work fits inside one person's day and is not growing.
Give the team ChatGPT if
You want drafts, summaries and ideas, and a person reads each one before it goes out. That works, costs little and is ready today. It stops working when nobody is at the keyboard. Or when you must later prove what happened.
Build it yourself if
Build it if the decisions you want to automate are your product. You should already run live software with engineers on call, and at least two people should own it. Then build it with the controls set out in What is AI governance? None of it is secret, and we want you to do it well.
Pick us if
All four. Not three.
- The work arrives whether or not anyone is free.
- The work is decisions made on evidence, such as reading, matching, checking and replying.
- Someone will ask you to prove what happened. You want to answer from the record.
- You don't want to hire for it, or put engineers on call.
All four true? An agent can do this work under your rules. Any one false? One of the options above probably fits better.
See how Gatehouse keeps it in boundsWhat we are not for
Work we turn down. Rule it out before you call.
Work that must finish in a split second
The policy check adds a little time and leaves a record. If the answer must arrive before a web page loads, use something else.
A process nobody has written down
Write the process down before you automate it. Do not let anyone sell you automation for a process that lives only in someone's head.
Anything you cannot undo if it goes wrong once
A hold stops the cases your rules flag, so a mistake nobody wrote a rule for can still get through. Where one mistake cannot be undone, keep a person doing the work.
Very small processes
If the process takes little time today, the teardown may cost you more attention than it saves. Come back when it grows, or when you need to prove what happened.
Straight answers
Is Surehand a replacement for hiring someone?
Sometimes. It takes over the decisions in a role that repeat, such as matching invoices or drafting the same reply from the same evidence. It does not replace a person whose value is the relationship, the negotiation or a call that needs fresh judgement.
How is this different from giving the team ChatGPT?
A chat window needs a person at the keyboard. It leaves no record you could hand an auditor, and nothing limits what it says. Our agents run on their own, inside rules you sign. They cannot pass their spend limit. Where judgement is needed, they stop for your approver. Every run leaves a record with the evidence used. Both tools are useful, for different work.
What happens if we want to leave?
You take the record, every rule change and every correction, in open formats. They read without Gatehouse. You never need us to open your own records.
Bring us the queue nobody wants.
Tell us what comes in, who handles it and where it breaks. A person replies, usually inside two business days.
support@surehand.io