The CRM is a phone book of conversations. The accounting system is a spreadsheet and a chartered accountant who replies after 7pm. The marketing pipeline is the founder's contacts list.
It works. It also burns out everyone involved.
Then enterprise AI showed up. The pitch was beautiful. The deployment took six months. The bill arrived. Customer data left the building. The board asked questions nobody had answers to.
We watched this play out across dozens of businesses. The pattern was the same every time: the AI was sold as transformation, deployed as overhead, and unplugged within the year.