For companies with 51–5,000 employees
Stop watching AI happen everywhere except inside your company.
The Manta Onsite Diagnostic is 2–5 days on-site with your C-suite, your ops leaders, and your front-line. A custom report you can actually execute. A path to automations that give your business real time back — not another pilot that dies in Q3. Starts at $15,000.
The dual fear in every executive meeting in 2026.
If you sit in the C-suite at a 51–5,000 employee company, you have two fears running at the same time:
1. You're going to miss the boat.
Every other CEO at every other event is talking about AI. Your board is asking. Your investors are asking. You're not sure if you're falling behind or if it's all noise.
2. You're going to spend a lot of money and nothing will actually change.
You've already seen a "pilot." You've already paid for a Copilot license that nobody opens. Your team is using ChatGPT for the wrong things. Your operations look exactly like they looked 18 months ago.
Meanwhile, on the inside:
- Your best people are burning out on busywork they know shouldn't exist
- Some of your team is quietly afraid AI is coming for their job — and that fear is costing you focus
- Every system you own is disconnected from every other system
- The "AI strategy" you've heard pitched is a 90-page deck nobody on your floor will ever execute
What you actually need is an outside operator who walks the floor, talks to the people doing the work, and comes back with automations you can put in place — not principles, not frameworks, not a maturity model.
That's what the Manta Onsite Diagnostic is.
What you get
Here's exactly what we deliver.
The On-Site (2 to 5 days)
Senior Manta operators on-site, working in your building. We're always on-site together — two operators, two perspectives, every engagement.
- Time with your C-suite — Strategy, priorities, what success looks like, where you've already tried and failed
- Time with your operations leaders — Actual workflows, current tools, biggest bottlenecks, where time is leaking by the hour
- Time with your front-line employees — What they do, where they get stuck, what scares them about AI, what would actually help
The Custom Report (within 5 business days)
This is not a deck. It's an executable document.
- The top 10 automation opportunities, prioritized by ROI and effort
- Specific recommendations — tools, integrations, owners, sequencing. We pick. We are not paid by any vendor.
- A 90-day, 6-month, and 12-month implementation roadmap
- A risk register — what could go wrong, what to monitor, where adoption typically breaks
- Cost estimates for implementation, with vendor pricing where relevant
The Read-Out Call (2 hours)
We walk your leadership team through the findings, answer questions, and align on what to act on first. Recording goes to your team.
30-Day Post-Delivery Support
Questions, follow-ups, vendor introductions if needed. Included.
Disruption is minimal
What the on-site asks of your people.
We try to keep the disruption small and the signal high. During the on-site, plan for roughly:
- C-suite/leadership: 60–90 minutes total across the engagement (one kickoff, one mid-point sync, one wrap)
- Ops leaders / department heads: 60–120 minutes each — one working session, one workflow walk-through
- Front-line employees: 20–45 minutes each, in groups or 1:1 — we keep these short and on the floor, not in a conference room
- Pre-on-site: A 10-question prep survey for your leadership team plus any process docs, org chart, or tool inventory you can share
We work around shift schedules and operating hours. We don't pull people off the floor without your sign-off.
Confidentiality + Data Handling
Standard mutual NDA. We don't keep client data after the engagement. No vendor kickbacks — we're not paid by any AI tool we recommend.
A real example
One example from a recent engagement.
A professional services and events company we work with used to build event project timelines by hand. Every new client kicked off the same multi-day cycle: 3 to 7 people in back-and-forth coordination, often a full work week before the timeline was finalized.
After the Manta engagement, they shipped phase one of a custom project tracker. Now the same timeline takes one person five minutes. Phase two is in build.
The annualized math: every new client they sign is 1–3 person-days back. Over a year of normal client throughput, that's measured in person-weeks of capacity freed up — capacity their team is using to actually grow the business, not just keep up with it.
Manufacturing/ops flavor: For a COO at a multi-shift manufacturing or operations-heavy company, the same methodology surfaces different specifics — shift handoff documentation, quality-check paperwork loops, scheduling and dispatch overhead, work-order intake and routing. The high-leverage opportunities live in the same place they always do: the repetitive workflows your front-line touches every day and your leadership rarely sees.
Pricing transparency
About pricing.
Most boutique consulting firms hide their pricing behind "request a quote." We don't. Here's how the Manta Onsite Diagnostic is priced.
How we price the diagnostic
The price is a function of:
- Days on-site (minimum 2, typically 3, maximum 5)
- Employee band (51–100 / 101–1,000 / 1,001–5,000)
- Travel (we eat travel inside North Carolina, billed at cost beyond)
- Scope complexity (single-site, multi-site, regulated industry, multi-business-unit)
| Company size | Typical on-site | Typical price |
|---|---|---|
| 51–100 employees, single site | 2 days | $15,000 |
| 101–1,000 employees, multi-business-unit | 3 days | $25,000–$35,000 |
| 1,001–5,000 employees, multi-site or regulated | 4–5 days | $40,000–$60,000 |
You get a fixed price after the discovery call. No scope creep. No time-and-materials surprises. If we agree on $35,000, that's the price — whether the diagnostic runs 3 days or 4, and regardless of how detailed the report ends up.
What comes after the diagnostic
The diagnostic is the front door. The reason we run it: the report leads to implementation, where Manta builds the automations we recommended. Implementation is scoped separately; first build phases commonly start at $25K+ and expand only if the ROI case is clear. You're under zero obligation to continue with us after the diagnostic.
The gap nobody is fixing
Why most AI consulting hasn't moved anything inside your company.
1.
The consultants don't understand your business.
They show up with slides about transformer architectures and leave with a $500K transformation quote.
2.
The consultants don't talk to the people doing the work.
They meet with the C-suite, deliver a strategy, and miss every place where time actually leaks.
3.
The consultants are vendors.
Their "diagnostic" is a pitch for their own tool. Their roadmap conveniently requires their stack.
4.
The consultants don't build.
They deliver a deck and disappear. Nothing gets implemented. Twelve months later, you're back where you started.
How Manta is different
- We talk to your front-line, not just your leadership. That's where the highest-leverage time leaks live.
- We don't sell AI tools. We pick the right ones for your situation, and we have no kickback agreements with any vendor.
- We've actually built this stuff. Every recommendation in your report is something we've implemented before. We can show you what it looks like, working.
- Senior Manta operators stay close to the work. This is not a senior partner who shows up day one and disappears.
- Automation is the outcome. We're not selling you "AI." We're bringing automations to your company — some powered by AI, some not — that give your team real hours back.
The process
Here's exactly how this works.
- 1
20-minute discovery call
with the Manta team. Fit check. Agree on price, days on-site, and timeline if we're a fit.
- 2
Pre-on-site preparation (1–2 weeks)
We do background research on your industry, send a 10-question prep survey to your leadership team, and confirm the on-site schedule.
- 3
2- to 5-day on-site
with your team — C-suite, ops, front-line.
- 4
5-day report delivery
- 5
2-hour read-out call
with your leadership.
- 6
30-day post-delivery support
— questions, follow-ups, vendor intros, implementation scoping if you want it.
Total elapsed time from kickoff to read-out: typically 4 to 5 weeks.
Honest fit check
Best fit / not a fit.
Best fit
- 51–5,000 employee companies
- Industries: service, manufacturing, agencies, wholesale, insurance, professional services, real estate brokerages, events
- A decision-maker who can approve $15K–$60K
- Leadership genuinely planning to act on findings — we won't run a diagnostic for a company that's not ready to execute
Not a fit
- Pre-revenue or sub-$1M ARR — see the Manta Diagnostic at $997
- Already committed to a specific vendor — we'd just be a rubber stamp
- Looking for AI training or AI literacy content — we don't teach courses, we build automations
About the team
Senior operators, not deck consultants.
Ken Causey
Founder
Founder of Blue Ring LLC + IM Werks. More than 19 years working with small and mid-sized businesses, plus four-plus years building AI tools, internal systems, custom apps, CRMs, and practical automation workflows.
FAQ
Common executive questions.
Why on-site? Can't this be done remotely?
No. The front-line conversations only work in person. You'll see how much value comes out of an hour in a room with your service team that you'd never get on a Zoom.
What if we need ongoing help after the diagnostic?
That's where most engagements go. The diagnostic is discovery + roadmap; implementation is where we build the automations we recommended. Implementation is scoped separately; first build phases commonly start at $25K+ and expand only if the ROI case is clear. You're under zero obligation to continue with us after the diagnostic.
Do you serve our industry?
Probably. We've worked across service, manufacturing, agencies, wholesale, insurance, professional services, real estate, and events. The methodology transfers — the front-line conversations adjust to your industry. The discovery call confirms fit.
What's the typical ROI?
We don't promise specific ROI in advance — it depends on what we find. Our qualification standard is that the diagnostic should plausibly surface six figures in annualized opportunity before we recommend moving forward.
How quickly can you start?
Typically 2–3 weeks from discovery call to on-site, depending on calendar fit. We cap on-sites at 4 per month so senior operators stay directly involved.
What if we have multiple locations?
We do one on-site at your primary location for the first engagement. For multi-site companies, we recommend that approach to validate the methodology, then add additional site on-sites at $10K–$15K per site for the second-and-onward locations.
Why do senior operators stay involved?
The valuable signal is in the workflow details. We do not hand the discovery to junior staff and disappear after the kickoff.
Confidentiality and data handling?
Standard mutual NDA. We don't keep client data after the engagement. No vendor kickbacks — we're not paid by any AI tool we recommend.
What's the difference between a diagnostic and an audit?
An audit looks backward at what's been done. A diagnostic looks forward at what should be built. We're not interested in grading your past — we're interested in what your business will look like 12 months from now.
Book a 20-Minute Discovery Call
No commitment. No deck pitch. Just a fit check.
Book a 20-Minute Discovery Call →Smaller company?
If you have 3–50 employees, the Manta Diagnostic at $997 is the right path — same diagnostic mindset, scaled to a smaller business, delivered through a 20-minute phone call with our AI assistant.
Local to the Triad?
Starting May 28 in Greensboro, we build automations live, in the room — no slides, no research time. Free with Meetup RSVP.
RSVP on Meetup.com →