Real tech help, built for your budget.

AI Workflow Review

Our employees are already using ChatGPT and other AI tools on their own. How do I know our customer information, business secrets, and private data aren't being exposed?

This is the question I hear most often now, and it's the right one to ask first.

This is what people call "Shadow AI": your team using AI tools you don't officially know about. Your team is experimenting with ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, and a half-dozen others, because vendors are pushing and the work still has to get done. The trouble is that data is going into those tools in ways nobody has mapped: customer information, internal documents, contracts, financial details. Policies haven't caught up.

Here's how I usually approach it:

1. A short AI usage audit to find out what tools are actually being used, what data is going into them, and where the real exposure is: customer info, business secrets, contracts, financial records, regulated data.
2. A plain-English AI use policy: three pages, not thirty. What's allowed, what isn't, and what gets recorded.
3. An approved Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout plan if you're already on Microsoft 365: gives your team a controlled tool where data stays inside your business's private Microsoft 365 workspace, with a record of who used it for what.
4. For every piece of work we automate going forward, we build in four safeguards by default: only the right people can touch each piece of data, a person still signs off on anything customer-facing, passwords and keys are stored securely, and there's always a way to undo it if something goes wrong.

The goal isn't to stop your team from using AI. It's to give them a safer way to do it, with the right boundaries in place to protect what matters.

Engagements that touch this: AI Workflow Review · $4,000 · 2 weeks. Optional next step: AI Workflow Build · $18,000 to $30,000 · 6 to 12 weeks for a live, ready-to-use build. Or Tech Advice on Retainer · $3,000/month for ongoing oversight. If a build doesn't deliver what was agreed, we keep working until it does or refund the difference (see the full promise).

Run a non-profit or community group? We reserve one reduced-fee or free slot per quarter. Tell us what you are working on.

Looking for more depth? If you need formal security certification (the standards called SOC 2 or ISO 27001), those have to come from a certified audit firm. We'd refer you to one we trust.

Discuss this engagement →

AI Opportunity Audit

Everyone's talking about AI. We don't know where to start. What should we actually do first?

This is the most universal first question I get, and the honest answer is shorter than most consultants will tell you.

You don't need an AI strategy deck. You need to know which two or three repetitive things your team does every week that AI can take off their plate, and which ones it can't do safely yet.

Here's how I'd approach it:

1. A two-week AI Opportunity Audit that looks at your current operations, identifies the highest-value workflow candidates, and gives you a plan with priorities: effort, impact, and risk estimates for each.
2. We pick one (the smallest useful first build) and either you take it forward yourself, or we build it together and get it running for real.
3. The deliverable is a plain-English document, not a 200-page slide deck. You should be able to read it in one sitting and know exactly what to do next.

The plan is written so you can run with it yourself, or keep going with us into the build. Either way is fine, and the audit fee comes off the price if you do keep going.

Engagements that touch this: AI Opportunity Audit · $2,500 · 2 weeks (the first step) → AI Workflow Review + Safe First Automation Pilot · $9,000 · 3 to 4 weeks, or $6,500 if you start it within 90 days of the audit, because the audit fee comes off → AI Workflow Build · $18,000 to $30,000 · 6 to 12 weeks. If the audit isn't useful to you, I'll redo it or refund it. If a build doesn't deliver what was agreed, we keep working until it does or refund the difference (see the full promise).

Run a non-profit or community group? We reserve one reduced-fee or free slot per quarter. Tell us what you are working on.

Looking for more depth? If you've already launched AI that's in use today and need to make it work better rather than start from scratch, the AI Workflow Build is a better fit than the AI Opportunity Audit.

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AI Workflow Review

Our team spends hours every week on the same repeatable tasks: proposal drafting, RFP responses, meeting summaries, looking up internal answers. Can AI realistically take some of that off our plate, safely?

Yes, and these are exactly the workflows AI is good at right now.

The market language is "agentic workflows" or "AI automation," but in plain English it means: software that does the boring, repeatable parts of work without your team having to do them manually. The work I've seen the highest return on for Canadian small and mid-sized businesses:

1. Proposal and quote drafting: AI pulls from your templates, past proposals, and pricing rules to produce a 70% draft in minutes, not hours. Your team reviews and finalizes.
2. Internal knowledge search: instead of your team digging through your shared folders, email, and chat for 20 minutes to find the same answer, an internal AI assistant that knows your business and gives the answer in five seconds.
3. Meeting summaries with automatic record updates: recordings turn into clean summaries plus auto-updated customer list entries.
4. Inbox sorting and quick first replies: incoming messages get categorized, and routine ones get a draft reply your team approves before it goes out.
5. Recurring reports that build themselves: the weekly leadership update, the monthly board summary, the customer status report. The data is pulled automatically on schedule, turned into a plain-English summary, and ready for review. The 2 to 4 hours someone currently spends every week goes back into the business.

Every piece of work we build includes five safeguards by default: only the right people can touch each piece of data, a person still signs off on anything customer-facing, passwords and keys are stored securely, there's a record of who did what, and there's always a way to undo it if something goes wrong.

I've delivered this kind of work in live use before: AI assistants used by more than 20,000 staff at a Canadian organization, saving the work of 1.3 full-time employees in the first year, and an automation that saved nearly half a full-time employee's work from a single bill-paying clerk processing 500+ invoices a day. The patterns travel to smaller businesses too.

Engagements that touch this: AI Workflow Review · $4,000 · 2 weeks → AI Workflow Review + Safe First Automation Pilot · $9,000 · 3 to 4 weeks → Full AI Workflow Build · $18,000 to $30,000 · 6 to 12 weeks. Each step upgrades into the next, with credit applied if you decide to keep going. If a build doesn't deliver what was agreed, we keep working until it does or refund the difference (see the full promise).

Run a non-profit or community group? We reserve one reduced-fee or free slot per quarter. Tell us what you are working on.

Looking for more depth? If you need a much bigger build for a large in-house team, that's a different kind of project. We plan, design, and deliver for small and mid-sized businesses, and we'd hand off a larger or more complex job to a partner shop.

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Tech Advice on Retainer

We've outgrown DIY tech, but we're not big enough for a full-time tech chief at $200K a year. What's the middle path?

The middle path is what I do most often: be your tech leader on retainer, without the full-time salary.

Most businesses your size are stuck in a familiar bind. Your office manager or operations lead has quietly become the default IT person. Decisions get made under pressure: picking software because a vendor cold-called, renewing licenses you don't fully use, putting out fires nobody wants to own. Meanwhile you keep meaning to make a real plan and never quite get there.

Here's what it looks like:

1. A two-hour planning meeting each month: we talk through what's coming up next quarter, vendor renewals, security questions, AI questions, and anything else on your plate.
2. A rolling tech plan: what's running today, what needs attention, what's worth investing in over the next 12 months.
3. Tech-contract reviews: before you sign or renew, I look at the contract, the alternatives, and what you're actually getting.
4. Someone you can call: when something breaks, when a vendor is pressuring you to make a decision you don't understand, or when an employee asks you to approve a new tool.
5. Ongoing light-touch tech oversight: basic security checks, software-license cleanup, documentation, and keeping track of what hardware you own.

You get experienced tech judgment on call without having to add a $200,000-a-year role to your team.

Engagements that touch this: Tech Advice on Retainer · $3,000/month · 3-month minimum. Plan on 6 to 18 months, often starting after a first review identifies the biggest gaps.

Run a non-profit or community group? We reserve one reduced-fee or free slot per quarter. Tell us what you are working on.

Looking for more depth? If you need 24/7 emergency tech support or on-site IT help, that's the job of a managed IT-support company. I'd refer you to one in your area that I trust.

Discuss this engagement →

Microsoft 365 Automation Plan

We're paying for Microsoft 365 and barely using anything beyond email and Teams. Can you tell us what we're missing, and is it worth turning on?

Honest answer: probably yes, and most Canadian small businesses I look at are using around 20% of what they're paying for.

Depending on which Microsoft 365 plan you're on, you may have access to a powerful set of tools you've never turned on: automatic workflows (Power Automate), business dashboards (Power BI), simple apps (Power Apps), document workflows (SharePoint), surveys and forms, smart lists, and the AI assistant (Copilot, usually a paid add-on). Most are gathering dust because nobody's had time to figure out which would actually help and which are just more software to learn.

What I usually do:

1. A Microsoft 365 review: what plan you're on, what tools come with it, what you're using, what's not turned on, where you're double-paying for things Microsoft 365 already gives you, and whether upgrading to a higher tier is worth it for your team.
2. A look at what you could automate: usually 3 to 6 candidates in any business: approval workflows, turning form submissions into records, getting alerts when things happen, scheduling, moving documents between folders automatically.
3. A check on whether Microsoft's AI assistant (Copilot) is worth turning on: what data needs cleaning up first, what guardrails you need, and whether the per-user cost is actually worth it for your team.
4. A plan to keep it from becoming a mess: who can build what, what gets reviewed, what gets recorded. Without rules, these Microsoft tools turn into a forest of half-finished apps nobody owns.
5. A plan with priorities: what to do first, what's not worth doing yet, and what to leave alone entirely.

The pattern I see most: businesses turn on Microsoft's automation tool, build three workflows, abandon two of them, and decide the tool doesn't work. The tool works fine. The setup didn't.

And if you're not on Microsoft 365 at all, or you're on the most basic plan, we'll start by talking about your goals and whether Microsoft is even the right fit. Sometimes it is. Sometimes there's a better path.

Engagements that touch this: Microsoft 365 Automation Plan · $3,500 to $6,000 fixed price · 2 to 3 weeks · for the review and plan. Optional ongoing Microsoft Retainer · $2,000 to $2,500/month · if you want help building the priority items.

Run a non-profit or community group? We reserve one reduced-fee or free slot per quarter. Tell us what you are working on.

Looking for more depth? If you need full-scale Microsoft automation work for a much bigger organization, we plan, review, and set the rules. The deep build goes to a partner shop.

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Website design & build

Our website looks like it was built in 2018 and makes us look smaller than we are. Can you fix it without 6 months and $30K?

Yes, and the timeline and price depend on what you actually need, which is usually less than people expect.

I run three website packages so you can pick the right fit:

1. Basic: $1,000, 1 to 2 weeks. A 1 to 3 page modern site for businesses that don't have one yet, or have something they want refreshed quickly. Mobile-friendly, contact form, Google visibility, 12 months of free hosting included.
2. Standard: $3,500, 2 to 3 weeks. A 5-page site with copywriting, content arranged around your business, full Google integration, and a contact form that routes messages to the right place. The right fit for most growing small businesses.
3. Premier: $9,500 to $12,000, 4 to 6 weeks. 8 to 12 pages with premium visual design, scroll-driven motion, copy written to turn visitors into customers, custom imagery, full search visibility, a dashboard you can use yourself to see what's working, and optional booking or online-store features. This is the flagship, and yes, the main Timberlea Consulting website at timberleaconsulting.ca is built in the Premier style, so you can judge for yourself.

Every package includes the things buyers actually care about: it works on phones, it loads fast, it shows up on Google, and you own what we build.

The two delivery paths:

• Self-hosted: we build the site and hand it over. You host it wherever you like. We're done at delivery.
• Hosted with us: we build the site AND keep it running ongoing. Add the Hosting & Domain Care add-on ($55/month) and you never think about the technical side again.

Engagements that touch this: Basic · $1,000 · 1 to 2 weeks. Standard · $3,500 · 2 to 3 weeks. Premier · $9,500 to $12,000 · 4 to 6 weeks. Maintenance & Growth · $350 to $500/month · ongoing site care after launch. Hosting & Domain Care · $55/month · we handle the technical side, available with any build.

Run a non-profit or community group? We reserve one reduced-fee or free slot per quarter. Tell us what you are working on.

Looking for more depth? If you need a complex online store with hundreds of products, or a subscription/membership site with recurring billing, we'd refer you to Shopify or a specialist agency. We build excellent business sites; deep e-commerce work isn't our specialty.

See the web design packages →

Tech Health Check

We've grown fast and nobody has ever looked at our technology as a whole. Where do we actually stand?

Most small businesses I meet have technology that grew by accident. Someone signed up for a tool three years ago, someone else added another one, a former employee still owns a login nobody can find, and there's no full list anywhere. It works fine until the day it doesn't.

The Tech Health Check takes three weeks and gives you the whole picture in plain English: every system your business runs on and what it actually does, what you're paying for and what nobody uses anymore, where the security basics are thin (who has admin, is there a backup, has anyone ever tested restoring it), which contracts auto-renew and when the notice windows close, what only lives in one person's head, and a short read on where AI could genuinely help you and where it isn't worth it yet.

It ends with a ranked fix plan: every recommended action with the effort, the rough cost, who should own it, and a sensible order, with the week-one items marked. This is a review, not a repair job. I keep a strict line between finding problems and fixing them, because the moment I start fixing, the review stops being independent.

The report is yours to act on with or without me. If you'd rather hand the list to someone else, you can, and it will make their job cheaper.

Engagement: Tech Health Check · $4,500 · 3 weeks for a business of roughly 2 to 10 people on one site. Larger businesses, or businesses with multiple locations, run up to $6,000. Fixed price either way, agreed before we start.

Run a non-profit or community group? We reserve one reduced-fee or free slot per quarter. Tell us what you are working on.

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Ongoing help, monthly

Prefer a steady hand to a one-time project?

Three ways we stay involved after a build, or instead of one. Each is a monthly arrangement with a clear scope and a clear price. No surprise invoices.

Run a non-profit or community group? We reserve one reduced-fee or free slot per quarter. Tell us what you are working on.