Own it or rent it: four ways to own your AI system

The two questions, and the grid they produce

Most suppliers give you one arrangement and call it the arrangement. There are really only two variables that matter, and once you answer both you have picked your model without needing a negotiation.

Question one is who owns the system, the accounts and the data. Question two is who runs it on a Tuesday afternoon when something needs checking. Put those on two axes and you get four squares, three of which are real options.

A fourth option sits on the diagonal rather than in a square, because it starts in one place and finishes in another. That is the ninety day handover, and for a lot of businesses it is the safest of the four.

• You own it, you run it. Build and train.
• You own it, we run it. Build and managed.
• We own it, we run it. Rent the output.
• We own it, you run it. Nothing sits here, and the next section explains why.

The four models in plain words

Read these as four different answers to the same question rather than as a good, better, best ladder. None of them is the premium version. They suit different businesses, and one of them will suit yours better than the other three.

• A, build and train. We build it, train your people and hand over the keys. A one time build fee, plus a small maintenance retainer if you want us on call. After that it is yours to run.
• B, build and managed. We build it, you own it, and we operate it every month. Monitoring, fixes, improvements, reporting and a named person to call when something looks wrong.
• C, ninety day handover. We run it for ninety days while training your people, then it becomes entirely yours. The most expensive first three months of the four, and the safest, because nothing gets handed over until it has been proven in your business with us still holding it.
• D, rent the output. We own and run the system. You rent the output, which is a monthly list of deliverables you choose and can change as the business changes. Stop paying and the output stops that month.

The square nobody sits in

If we owned the system and you ran it, nobody would be accountable when it broke. You could not fix it, because it is not yours to open. We would not fix it, because we cannot see how you have been using it. Both sides would be honestly confused and the customer waiting for a reply would still be waiting.

Arrangements like that do exist in this market, usually by accident rather than design, and they are the reason a lot of owners have decided that automation does not work. The system was never the problem. The absence of a named owner was.

Every square on the grid has somebody accountable when it breaks, or it is not on the grid.

Find the row that sounds like you

Read down the list. Where you nod, the models named after it are the ones worth reading twice. Most owners find two rows that describe them exactly and one model that appears in both.

When each one is the wrong choice

Four ways to buy also means four ways to buy badly, and this is the section to read before the others. The awkward line is printed under every option on purpose, because the people it talks out of one option are exactly the people who should be choosing another.

None of these is a warning about the model. Each one is a mismatch between a model and a business, and a mismatch found now is free.

• Do not choose build and train if nobody on your team has a spare hour a week. An owned system that nobody operates is a very expensive filing cabinet.
• Do not choose build and managed if you want the monthly cost to end. It does not end. You own the asset and you are still paying us to run it, and that is the arrangement rather than a stage on the way to something else.
• Do not choose the ninety day handover if you need the cheapest possible entry. It is the most expensive first ninety days of the four, and it buys certainty rather than savings.
• Do not choose rent the output if you want to own an asset at the end. You will not own one. And if payment stops, the output stops that same month, which is deliberate and written into the agreement rather than a penalty applied afterwards.

Adverts, content and search sit outside the grid

Advertising, content production and search visibility are recurring work permanently. There is nothing that finishes and then runs itself, because the market keeps moving and so does the work. So there are two options there rather than four.

Either your team is trained to run it, with a one time build fee and a small retainer afterwards, or we run it on our systems and you rent the output as an agreed monthly list of campaigns, creative and content. The first is wrong if nobody will ever pick it up. The second is wrong if you want to own something at the end, or want full control of how the brand sounds in three years.

On price, across all of it, there is no number in this page and there will not be one on a first call either. Two companies buying the same system correctly pay very different amounts.

What moves it is how many channels need connecting, advert spend under management, content volume, the number of offices or service lines, compliance overhead in your market, how open your existing systems are, whether you start with a brand kit or from nothing, how many people need training, the state of your data on day one, and which model above you pick.

What does not move it is how urgently you need it. We do not price panic.

Common questions

Should I own an AI automation system or rent the output?

Own it if you will still be running this in three years, if you want the monthly cost to end eventually, or if your data cannot sit with an outside vendor long term. Rent the output if you want the lowest cost to start, if nobody internally will ever operate it, or if you genuinely might not still be doing this in a year. Both are honest choices and they suit different businesses.

What does it mean to own the system rather than the software?

It means the accounts, the workflows, the documentation and the data are in your name and stay with you. The underlying tools are still licensed the way any business licenses software. What you own is the configuration, the context and the connections, which is the part that took the work and the part that is specific to your business.

Can we switch models later on?

Moving from managed to running it yourself is a training exercise, and that is essentially what the ninety day handover is. Moving from renting the output to owning something is a new build rather than a transfer, because on the rent model the system was never yours. Say which direction you are likely to want before we start and it changes what gets documented.

Why is the ninety day handover the most expensive at the start?

Because for those three months you are paying for the build and for us to operate it while your people learn it, which is two things at once. What you get back is that nothing is handed over until it has been proven in your business with us still holding the risk. Owners with a board or a procurement process usually consider that worth the overlap.

What happens to the system if we stop working with Wobble?

On build and train, managed and the ninety day handover, the system keeps running. You keep the accounts, the workflows, the documentation and the data, and we remove our access. On renting the output the system stays ours, so the output stops, and everything produced for you is exported in a usable form.

Is renting the output the same as an agency retainer?

The commercial shape is similar in that you pay monthly and own nothing at the end. The difference is what you are paying for. An agency retainer usually buys hours of effort. Renting the output buys an agreed monthly list of deliverables that you choose and can change, produced by a system with trained people on top of it rather than by hours alone.