About / a small senior team
We built the firm
we'd hire ourselves.
Senior practitioner-led AI automation consultancy, with 13+ years of enterprise software experience. Plain talk, small pilots. Based in Johannesburg, working with businesses across South Africa and abroad.
The bet we're making
AI is over-hyped and genuinely useful.
Both, at once.
The gap between what AI is sold as and what it actually does is where small businesses get burned. On one side: tools they don't need, sold with a year-long contract. On the other: fear of touching anything at all, while a competitor quietly automates the work they're still doing by hand.
We exist to close that gap. Senior practitioner-led, drawing on 13+ years inside large enterprises building software, now applied to the small and mid-sized businesses everyone else ignores. We will tell you plainly when the answer is “you don't need this yet.”
If a spreadsheet would do the job, we'll say so. If the problem is a process problem, not a technology problem, we'll say that too. The most expensive AI is the AI you didn't need.
How we got here
The short version
We spent years inside other people's businesses watching the same two things happen.
The big consultancies arrived in suits, billed for slide decks, and left with the partner's flight home before the actual work started. The owner-operators were polite about it. They paid the invoices. The automations didn't ship.
Then a wave of AI tools landed on those same businesses. Each one came with a sales call that started, “Imagine if your team could…” Half of them were sold things they didn't need. The other half got scared off something that would have paid for itself in a month.
So we built the firm we'd hire ourselves. Small, senior, quoted up front, honest about what AI can do and what it can't. The kind of firm you tell other owners about because it actually worked, not because the partner sent you a fruit basket.
That's the version. The longer one happens on the audit call.
How we think
Three things we won't compromise on
Every principle here exists because we've seen the alternative go wrong in someone else's business. Including ours.
Senior people only
You work directly with the person building your automation. No juniors learning on your budget, no offshore team you never speak to.
Why
Because the questions that matter early (does this need AI at all, what's the cheapest way to test it, what could go wrong) only get answered well by people who've been wrong about them before.
Honest about AI
AI is genuinely useful and genuinely oversold. We tell you where it pays off and where it doesn't. If a spreadsheet would do the job, we'll say so.
Why
Because the most expensive AI is the AI you didn't need. We'd rather lose the work than sell you a science project that costs more than the problem.
Low-risk by design
Every engagement starts with a small pilot, quoted in the free call and locked before kickoff. You expand because it worked, not because you signed up to something you can't get out of.
Why
Because trust gets built one shipped automation at a time. Nothing about how we sell should look like the firms that burned you before.
The clearing-the-air part
What we're not
We get asked this every audit. Easier to say it once, here.
- 01
We're not a McKinsey, a Deloitte, or a BCG.
No slide decks measured in centimetres, no transformation programmes, no analysts billing for the work the partner promised. If you need a year-long strategy engagement, we'll point you elsewhere.
- 02
We're not a SaaS reseller.
We earn nothing from your Zapier, OpenAI, or Microsoft bill. The tools we recommend are the tools we'd use in our own business. If a cheaper or simpler thing would do, we'll say.
- 03
We're not a staffing agency.
We don't parachute juniors into your business and bill the markup. The person you scope the work with is the person who builds it.
- 04
We're not the AI-hype crowd.
Nobody on the team will use the word 'revolutionary' in a meeting. We're here to remove repetitive work, not to sell you a vision.
How an engagement works
Four steps, smallest first
You never sign for the next step before the current one has paid its way. The first step costs you nothing.
01
Free 30-min audit
We sit with you, walk through where your team's time goes, and rank the jobs worth automating. You leave with the list either way.
Free / online / one session
02
Small pilot, quoted up front
One painful job, in production, typically in 2 to 3 weeks. Scope and price agreed in the audit call, then locked. You get a working automation, runbooks, alerts, and the team trained to own it.
Quoted in call / 2-3 weeks
03
Scale once it's paid
Only after pilot #1 has saved more than it cost do we look at the next job. No bundle, no commitment. Optional monthly retainer covers monitoring and small changes.
Modular / month-to-month
04
Hand-off when you want
You own everything from day one: accounts, code, credentials, the runbook. The day you stop working with us, nothing breaks.
Yours, end to end
The practical details
Where we are, how we work
Based in
Johannesburg
Working hours
SAST, with flexibility for clients abroad
Shape
Small senior studio, broader network on call
Experience
13+ years in enterprise software
Trigger Consulting
Let's find your first automation
A 30-minute call. We'll talk through where your time goes and whether AI can help. If it can't, we'll tell you that too.