Consulting for growing companies

Pharos Lumen

Bills you cut. Tools you own. AI you can use.

A consulting practice for growing companies who want lower software bills, custom internal tools that fit their actual workflows, and clear guidance on where AI helps and where it does not. We audit, build, and advise. You own everything we deliver. No subscriptions, no vendor lock-in.

Operating from Charlotte, NC

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What is Pharos Lumen

The leverage is hiding in what you already have.

Most growing companies hit the same wall. The systems that worked at 20 people start cracking at 100. Tools accumulate without consolidating. Software bills creep without anyone tracking why. AI pressure builds with no clear answer on what to actually do. The instinct is to buy another tool. The leverage is usually somewhere else.

Pharos Lumen is the consulting practice that finds the leverage. Sometimes that means cutting the software bill by 20 to 30 percent. Sometimes it means building a small internal tool that replaces three SaaS subscriptions. Sometimes it means a written AI Readiness Map that gives leadership a defensible answer to "what is our AI strategy" in one afternoon.

We work with companies between 50 and 500 employees. The ones past the startup stage but not yet running on full-time engineering or operations teams. We audit, build, and advise. You own everything we deliver.

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The Practice

Three lines of work.

Each one is scoped and priced clearly. Most engagements start with one and expand naturally into the others.

Cost Optimization
Find what your tools cost.
A focused 1 to 2 week audit of your full software and vendor stack. Surfaces redundancies, underused subscriptions, and overpaying. Deliverable is a written report with prioritized recommendations your finance team can act on.
$3,000 to $5,000
Internal Tools
Build the missing piece.
Purpose-built internal tools (onboarding trackers, support knowledge systems, approval workflows, reporting dashboards) that fit how your team actually works. Two to four weeks from kickoff to handoff. You own the code, data, and deployment.
$6,000 to $15,000
AI Advisory
A clear AI strategy.
A half-day workshop with leadership and operations that maps your actual workflows against current AI capabilities. Deliverable is a written one-page AI Readiness Map: where AI creates leverage, where it creates risk, and what to do first.
$1,500 to $3,000
See case studies →
Case Studies

Engagements we have delivered.

Specific problems, specific solutions, measurable outcomes.

AI Advisory
AI Readiness for a Growing Leadership Team
Problem
A leadership team was getting AI pressure from every direction with no clear internal framework for what to actually do.
Solution
Half-day workshop mapping their workflows against current AI capabilities. Delivered a written one-page AI Readiness Map.
Results
A clear, defensible AI strategy in a single afternoon. Two concrete projects identified to pursue first, three to avoid entirely.
Takeaway: The bottleneck on AI adoption is usually not the technology. It is the absence of a framework for evaluating where it fits.
Internal Tools
AI-Assisted Customer Support Drafting
Problem
High ticket volume with mostly repeat questions, but every response still drafted from scratch. Senior reps rewriting the same answers.
Solution
An AI-assisted drafting layer inside the existing support tool. Suggests a draft for each new ticket. Humans review, edit, and send.
Results
Average response time dropped. Senior reps freed for complex tickets. New hires ramped faster with working drafts to learn from.
Takeaway: The best AI implementations do not replace the work. They reduce the friction in doing it well.
Internal Tools
AI-Enabled Data Querying
Problem
Business teams had domain knowledge but could not access database insights because they did not know SQL.
Solution
AI-assisted query interface that translates plain English business questions into SQL, executes them, and lets users verify the results.
Results
Non-technical users gained safe, self-service access to data. Decision cycles shortened from days to hours for common questions.
Takeaway: AI's biggest leverage in most businesses is not replacing humans. It is lowering the friction between humans and the systems they already have.
Internal Tools
Customer Onboarding Operations Overhaul
Problem
A growing operations team tracking customer onboarding across spreadsheets, Slack standups, and a project board. Status always slightly out of date.
Solution
Purpose-built onboarding tracker. Consolidated status, ownership, blockers, and timeline. Integrated with existing tools instead of replacing them.
Results
Onboarding time-to-go-live reduced by roughly 30 percent. Leadership got daily visibility without asking. New hires saw the full picture from day one.
Takeaway: Operations workflows are often messy not because the team is disorganized, but because the tools were not designed for the actual shape of the work.
Cost Optimization
AI Voice Cost Optimization
Problem
Established AI voice generation vendors charge commercial pricing that scales aggressively. Mid-volume workflows commonly run $20 to $200 per month.
Solution
Built and deployed a custom self-hosted voice generation pipeline using open-source models on commodity GPU infrastructure.
Results
Production cost dropped to roughly $2 to $3 per month for an equivalent 150,000 character workload. A 90 to 95 percent cost reduction.
Takeaway: Established AI vendors price for enterprise-scale use cases. For mid-market workloads, a custom-built alternative often delivers the same quality at a fraction of the cost.
See how we work →
Process

How we work.

Transparent at every step. Fixed scope. Fixed price.

1
Diagnostic call
A focused 15-to-30 minute conversation about what is actually happening in your operation. You talk, we ask. No pitch.
2
Scoped proposal
A written proposal with clear scope, timeline, fixed price, and deliverables. No ambiguous hourly rates. No surprises.
3
Build, audit, advise
Weekly checkpoints. Documented as built, not at the end. Most engagements ship in two to four weeks from kickoff.
4
Handoff or retainer
Own everything we deliver (no recurring fee), or pick a monthly retainer for ongoing support. Your team's call.
Start a conversation →
Start the conversation

The fastest way to see if there is a fit is a 15-minute call.

Send a note describing what is on your mind, and we will reply within one business day to set up a time.

Useful things to mention in your note
  • What is your biggest operational pain point right now?
  • Do you have internal engineering capacity, or would this need to be built and handed off?
  • What is your timeline?