I help small and mid-sized businesses do the unfashionable half of the work. The AI pilot turned into a habit. The systems on speaking terms with each other. The change people actually got behind. The security posture a regulator would accept. The team that keeps getting better after I leave.
Twenty years at the enterprise end, brought down to small-business pace and price. Sydney, working across Australia and New Zealand.
These are the disciplines I have spent twenty years getting wrong, then right, in big organisations and small. I bring the same thinking to a five-person business that I brought to a five-thousand-person one. Less theatre. Same standard.
When the AI pilot impressed everyone in week one, and quietly stopped in week six.
Most AI work in small business is a strategy deck and a stalled pilot. The work that matters is the ten tasks the team actually does every week, two of them rebuilt around Copilot or Claude, with a human in the loop and a number on the wall measuring whether it saved time. That is adoption. The rest is a course.
The why behind the tool is the moat. The how is the easy part now.
When the source of truth is a spreadsheet, and nobody trusts it.
Most small businesses are not under-invested in technology. They are over-invested in tools that do not speak to each other. The job is one honest system per function — finance, customer, stock, reporting — talking to the others, with the busywork removed. Business Central or Xero. HubSpot or Zoho. Shopify. One dashboard everyone trusts.
Less software. More flow. The platform is never the point.
When you bought the platform and quietly lost half the team.
Technology projects do not usually fail technically. They fail on the human side, in the quiet weeks after go-live when the people whose work changed weren't asked, just told. Change as a practice means involving the person whose job moves, on day one not day ninety, and giving them the room to say what is actually broken.
Most of this is conversations. None of it is communications.
When the regulators stopped grading small business on a curve.
Since late 2024 the law has moved, in both countries. The old "too small to be a target" line no longer holds. The free Cyber Check on this site does the one-minute version: a passive external read of what the open internet already knows about a domain you own. Beyond that, I harden posture against the ACSC Essential Eight and the NZ CERT Critical Controls, with a plain-English plan you can actually execute.
Not theatre. Not a binder. A posture.
When "we sent them on training" didn't change anything.
The strongest moat a small business has is the capability of the people inside it. I run short, plain-English programmes that turn a team from dependent to capable: AI literacy that does not pretend, security habits that hold up under pressure, and the digital workflows you will run after I leave. Custom, short, taught against your real work.
No certificates anyone needs. Capability stays in the building.
The working positions behind the five. If you came here for a deck, this is not the practice. If you came here to argue with one of them, the reply box is open.
The problem behind the brief usually is. Naming it is half the job.
Lining the team up behind one is. Everything else is paperwork.
If you cannot measure whether the tool saved time, it didn't.
If it cannot be explained to the person whose job it changes, it is not yet understood.
Sustainable pace beats sprinting to burnout. You have a business to run.
The quote is the quote. Fair on price, plain on scope.
Most engagements settle into one of these. If your situation does not fit, say so and we will find the shape that does. The starting point is the same either way: bring the situation, not the brief.
A short, bounded engagement to shape a single decision. A few conversations, a written read of the situation in plain English, and a recommendation you can act on without needing me again.
How it runsA part-time senior technology, AI or delivery lead for businesses that need the seniority without the cost of a full hire. One or two days a week, long enough to land real work.
How it runsA rollout that stalled, an AI pilot that lost momentum, a go-live that slipped. I come in, read the room honestly, stabilise it, and either finish the job or hand it back to someone better suited.
How it runsA new capability built from scratch. A Business Central or HubSpot setup, a reporting layer, a security uplift, an education programme. Short discovery, a clear plan, then execution alongside your people.
How it runsBuilt for the practice, free for the public. One reads what the open internet already knows about your business. The other writes the plan before you leave the room.
A passive external posture check for any domain you own. DNS, email authentication, TLS, security headers, exposure and brand risk. Plain-English report mapped to the AU and NZ obligations that matter.
An offline planning assistant that turns a meeting, your notes, even a photo of a whiteboard, into a prioritised plan, a RAID log and a Gantt, as Excel and Word. Runs entirely on your laptop.
Short pieces on AI, digital, change, cyber and the small-business reality the big firms miss. Why projects really fail. Go-live discipline. Change as a practice. AI without the hype. Published most Mondays and Wednesdays on LinkedIn, indexed here.
Before I narrowed to small business, I led enterprise programmes on SAP S/4HANA, Salesforce, and NetSuite, for banks, carmakers, retailers, and large not-for-profits. Programme recoveries, governance boards, steering committees, the lot, with PRINCE2 underneath. I mention it so you know the thinking you are getting is the same thinking those programmes received.
Then I get back to the work in front of us, which is usually a lot smaller, a lot more useful, and at a small-business price.
Manuel Re · Sydney
Describe what you are dealing with in your own words. A sentence, a voice note, a paragraph. I will tell you honestly whether I am the right fit and, if not, point you to someone who is. No sales call. No follow-up sequence.
