"I help my partners do the things that inspire them." — Sree
For Canadian small and mid-sized businesses. Twenty years building technology for the government, BlackBerry, and banks. No junior staff. You work with me directly.
For Canadian businesses with 1 to 150 people. Serious craft, plain English, you work with me directly.
Practical guidance on where AI can help your business, where it can't, and what to try first. We're not tied to any vendor, so the advice is honest. Built around what you already use.
See our AI work →Get real value from the Microsoft 365 you already pay for every month. We turn on the tools you didn't know you had (automatic workflows, AI assistants, business dashboards) and make sure they actually help your team.
See our Microsoft work →A steady hand on the tech decisions you'd rather not make alone. We review your tools, check what's working, set guardrails, and give you a plan that fits your budget.
See our advisory work →Fast, modern websites that turn visitors into customers and stay good-looking for years. Delivered in weeks, not months.
See our web work →At a big consulting firm, a partner sells you the work and hands it to a junior. Here, you talk to me from the first call to the last delivery, every step.
No passing you off to a junior employee, no account manager in the middle, no offshore team. I plan the work, and I do the work.
Big-company expertise at small-business scale. Real advice from your first call. No big-firm invoice, no junior on the keyboard.
You know exactly what you're getting, who's doing it, and what it costs, before any work starts. No surprise add-ons, no surprise invoices.
The kind of work usually reserved for big companies, now within reach of businesses that couldn't afford it before.
From twenty years building technology for the government, BlackBerry, and banks. The businesses change. The patterns travel.
The situation: 23,000 staff who needed answers out of the organization's own documents, fast.
What I did: architected and built AI assistants that staff use every day, with the safeguards to do it safely.
The result: 1.3 full-time employees worth of work saved in the first year.
The situation: one bill-paying clerk processing 500+ invoices a day, by hand.
What I did: built an automation that handles the routine invoices, with a person still on the judgment calls.
The result: nearly half a full-time role worth of work recovered.
Both are from employed work at big organizations, which is the point: the same patterns fit small and mid-sized businesses, at small-business prices.
We look at what you use today (tools, people, processes, data) and tell you what's working and what's holding you back.
You get a plan: what to do first, what it costs, how long it'll take, and an honest estimate of payback. Not a 200-page report nobody reads.
We do the work, train your team, and stick around so the benefits keep growing.
Most small businesses make tech decisions without anyone in-house who knows the answers. Book a free 30-minute call. You'll walk away knowing your biggest tech weak spot and the first thing to fix. No invoice. No pitch. Just a straight answer.
Run a non-profit or community group? We reserve one reduced-fee or free slot per quarter. Tell us what you are working on.
A short, practical checklist for Canadian small businesses thinking about AI. Written in plain English. Takes ten minutes.
We use your email to send you the checklist, nothing else, unless you tick the box. See our Privacy Policy.
Tech work that helps your business move forward, for Canadian small and mid-sized businesses. Fixed prices, clear costs, no surprise invoices.
Nearly every conversation about tech help starts with one of seven questions. Here's how I'd answer yours.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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 at a 23,000-staff Canadian organization that saved 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.
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:
You get experienced tech judgment on call without having to add a $200,000-a-year role to your team.
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:
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.
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:
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:
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.
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.
Your tech leader on call, without the full-time salary.
3-month minimum. Plan on 6 to 18 months. See the full answer above.
Ongoing help building the priority items from your Microsoft 365 Automation Plan.
Follows a Microsoft 365 Automation Plan; we agree the cadence together before we start. See the full answer above.
Your website cared for ongoing after launch.
For websites we build or refresh. See what's included.
Every engagement, fixed-fee or retainer. Hover to pause.
This page covers the seven questions partners ask me most often. The FAQ page has every other question, and a few that don't fit cleanly anywhere else.
See the FAQ →I also do AI coding tools and security setups for software teams, and IT-process design for organizations where the tech only lives in one person's head. And when you've brought in new tools, I help your team actually adopt them, with hands-on support or plain-English AI workshops to get everyone up to speed. These don't fit one of the seven questions above, but the work is just as serious. If your situation isn't named on this page, tell me what you're trying to do.
These are the questions that come up most often when partners are deciding whether to work with us. Updated regularly as new questions emerge.
Don't see your question? Email me directly or book a free 30-min call. — Sree
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.
Start with a two-week AI Opportunity Audit that identifies the highest-value workflow candidates and gives you a plan with priorities. Then pick one and either take it forward yourself or build it together with us. The deliverable is a plain-English document, not a 200-page slide deck.
Casual usage is a different muscle than everyday use. ChatGPT in someone's browser tab is helpful for one-off questions, but it never turns into real hours saved unless you wire it into the work itself: your customer database, your inbox, your document tools, your reports.
The bridge is the AI Opportunity Audit: we look at what you've already tried, find which experiments could become repeatable workflows, and pick one concrete first build. That's the difference between "we use ChatGPT sometimes" and "the Monday morning report writes itself now."
Yes. The work I've seen the highest return on for Canadian small businesses: proposal/quote drafting, internal knowledge search, meeting summaries with auto-updated customer list entries, inbox sorting with quick first replies, and recurring reports that build themselves. Every piece of work 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.
Yes, this is one of the highest-impact AI projects for any business with documents scattered across folders. An AI assistant pointed at your real documents (with the right permission rules so it only shows each person what they're allowed to see) typically turns a 20-minute hunt into a 5-second answer.
The work means cataloging your existing documents, setting up the assistant, getting the permissions right (so the assistant doesn't show finance docs to people outside finance), and training the team on how to ask. Usually 4 to 8 weeks depending on how many documents you have.
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 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). The Microsoft 365 Automation Plan reviews what you have, finds the high-value automation opportunities, sets up guardrails so it doesn't become a mess, and gives you a plan with priorities.
Probably yes, with guardrails. GitHub Copilot and similar tools genuinely lift developer productivity, but rolling them out without an IP policy (intellectual property, who owns what the AI helps write), a security setup, and a measurement plan tends to create a different set of problems six months in.
What I do: a security posture assessment, a GitHub Advanced Security setup plan, a Copilot governance and AI coding policy (what code can the AI see, what can it suggest, what gets flagged), and a way to measure whether it's actually helping.
Honestly, this is the easiest place to start because there's no legacy to worry about. The Basic package was designed exactly for this: $1,000, 1 to 2 weeks, fully done-for-you.
You bring me your business name, what you do, who you serve, and any photos or info you have. I handle everything else: the domain registration, the design, the copy structure (working from what you tell me), the Google search and Google Maps visibility, the contact form with auto-reply, the security, and 12 months of free hosting.
If you want zero hassle after launch, add Hosting & Domain Care at $55/month and we keep it running ongoing: domain, security, monitoring, small fixes, all handled. You can stop or change it anytime after the first 3 months.
Most businesses in your situation have a real professional web presence in about two weeks, from start to finish.
Yes, and faster and cheaper than people expect. I run three packages: Basic ($1,000 · 1 to 2 weeks), Standard ($3,500 · 2 to 3 weeks), and Premier ($9,500 to $12,000 · 4 to 6 weeks). Plus two ongoing options: Maintenance & Growth ($350 to $500/month) and Hosting & Domain Care ($55/month, available with any build).
This is the new "Show Up in AI Search" service: setup $3,500 to $5,000 · 2 weeks. We restructure your site so AI can actually extract clean answers from it, add the invisible tags that tell AI systems exactly who you are and what you do, set up a real process for collecting customer reviews, and get you listed in the directories and credibility sources AI looks for before citing you. By the end, when someone asks ChatGPT or Google's AI "who does X in Halifax," you've got a fair shot at being one of the names that comes back. AI search doesn't sit still, though. The systems get retrained, your competitors keep adding content, and the answers change. Ongoing monitoring at $750 to $1,500/month tracks how AI tools actually describe your business, keeps your listings and reviews current, and puts the answer right when it drifts.
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. Data is going into those tools in ways nobody has mapped: customer information, internal documents, contracts, financial details. Policies haven't caught up.
I usually do a short AI usage audit, a plain-English AI use policy (three pages, not thirty), an approved Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout plan if you're already on Microsoft 365, and build four safeguards into every piece of work we automate going forward: 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.
Probably not. The pattern I see most often: someone in operations built three or four automations during a busy quarter, they work, nobody documented them, and now those workflows are quietly handling customer data, payments, or internal records with no review and no clear owner.
What I do: walk through each existing automation, write down what it does, check what data it touches, identify who owns it, and write a short "what to do when it breaks" guide. Then a security check on permissions, passwords, and activity records. Usually 1 to 2 weeks for a small set of automations.
The middle path is the Tech Advice on Retainer service: a two-hour planning meeting each month, a rolling tech plan, tech-contract reviews, someone you can call, and light-touch tech oversight. You get experienced tech judgment on call without adding a $200K role.
Yes, that's the Tech Advice on Retainer service. Specifically: I take over the tech-decision burden. Vendor calls, renewal decisions, AI questions, employee tool requests, the "should we move to X" conversations: they come to me first. You stay informed, but you stop being the only one carrying it.
Plan on 6 to 18 months. Engagements often start after an initial assessment surfaces the biggest gaps and we agree on a roadmap to close them.
Fair concern, and I price the work to absorb that risk for you. The AI Opportunity Audit ($2,500) ends with a plan with priorities. If the plan doesn't surface at least one workflow where the math works (hours saved × hourly cost > project cost in under 12 months), I'll tell you that, and we don't proceed. If the audit isn't useful to you, I'll redo it or refund it.
For builds, I quote against the specific workflow we agreed on. The hours-saved math is written into the proposal. If the work doesn't deliver what was agreed, we keep working until it does or refund the difference.
No. Documentation is part of every project, not an add-on. You get a plain-English guide for what the workflow does, who owns it, where the data flows, and what to do when it breaks.
You also get 30 to 60 days of post-launch support depending on the project size. After that, you have three options: take it from there yourself, retain me as needed for occasional fixes, or move to a Maintenance & Growth retainer if it's a website, or a Tech Advice on Retainer if it's broader tech work.
Three honest reasons. First, you're working with a Canadian business under Canadian law. Canadian privacy laws apply (PIPEDA, and provincial laws in some places), you're billed in Canadian dollars, and I'll tell you exactly which tools touch your information and where they hold it. Anything based outside Canada is named in my privacy policy. If your work can't leave the country, say so and I'll keep it on Canadian tools, or on tools that run on my own computer. Second, the real-world record: 20 years across the government, BlackBerry, and banks, including AI assistants at a 23,000-staff Canadian organization that saved the work of 1.3 full-time employees in the first year. Third, you talk to me. Every time. No project manager in the middle, no offshore implementation team, no big-firm partner who sells the work and disappears.
I'm not for every project. If you need 300 consultants on a 12-month transformation, that's a big consulting firm. If you need planned, accountable, plain-English work for a Canadian small business, that's what we do.
Yes. We reserve one reduced-fee or free slot per quarter for non-profits and community groups where the work matters and our advertised price doesn't fit. The principle: generosity that's bounded enough to be sustainable, one slot per quarter so it's never a maybe, but also never an empty promise.
How to inquire: tell us what you're trying to do, who it serves, and what you can realistically contribute. We'll figure something out together.
Don't see your question? Email Sree directly at sree@timberleaconsulting.ca, or book a free 30-min call.
Fast, modern websites that work for everyone, including visitors with disabilities. For Canadian small and mid-sized businesses. Delivered in weeks. Built to last.
For businesses without a website yet, or with an old site they want refreshed quickly.
The step up as you grow: a custom site that shows customers you're serious about your business.
Optional: add Hosting & Domain Care ($55/month) so we handle the technical side ongoing.
View the live example (you're reading it)
The flagship, and what the Timberlea Consulting website you're reading is built with.
Optional: add Hosting & Domain Care ($55/month) so we handle the technical side ongoing.
For partners who've launched a site and want it cared for ongoing.
For partners who want us to handle the technical side ongoing: hosting decisions, security renewals, and domain management all come off your plate. We take care of all of it.
We build the website AND keep it running. We handle the domain, the security, the technical setup, and ongoing care. You don't think about the technical side again. Cancel anytime after the first 3 months.
A website is only as strong as what sits on it. When you're launching or rebuilding, we can do the writing and messaging too, so you don't stare at an empty blog or a half-written homepage six months after launch. Set scope, written in your voice, done once, done right.
On-brand copy for the pages that do the selling (home, services, about, contact) written to match the design, not retrofitted to it.
Cornerstone blog posts aligned to what you sell and the questions your customers ask first. Written in your voice, ready to publish on launch day.
Profile refresh and a 60-day post calendar with drafts: enough to build visibility without it turning into a second job.
The keywords customers actually use, the right behind-the-scenes tags on every page, Google's search tools set up, and a polished Google Business profile: all done properly the first time.
Already working with Timberlea Consulting on the tech side? Your website and your other tech systems should work together, not in separate boxes. We make sure they connect.
"I help my partners do the things that inspire them."
I've been describing my work that way for years; Timberlea Consulting is the structure I finally built around it.
I founded Timberlea Consulting after twenty years working where technology and business meet: for the government, BlackBerry, and banks. The name comes from Timberlea, Nova Scotia: grounded, built to last, rooted in community.
After two decades helping large organizations adopt technology, the pattern was clear. Small and mid-sized businesses face the same problems (AI, cloud, security, aging systems) without the budget for a big consulting firm. Timberlea Consulting exists to close that gap.
Most of the work is remote. A Canadian business in BC or Newfoundland faces the same technology questions as one down the road. My Halifax roots are a grounding, not a ceiling.
Architected and built AI assistants used every day by 23,000+ staff at a Canadian organization, saving the work of 1.3 full-time employees in the first year.
Led the launch of Microsoft's AI assistant (Copilot) for 500+ employees: from the business case, through the rules and setup, to measuring how it was used.
Led the launch of GitHub's AI coding tools and security software for a team of 100+ software developers at a regulated organization.
Led reviews of software-development practices, ran AI pilot projects, and set up rules for Microsoft's automation tools. All for a government program.
Presented on AI, automation, and IT operations at Canadian industry conferences over the past decade.
Designed an automation that saved nearly half a full-time employee's work from a single bill-paying clerk processing 500+ invoices a day.
Outside the paid work, I currently serve as a community member on an organization's research committee board, and I coach my kids' soccer team. Earlier in my life, I was a Big Brother through Big Brothers Big Sisters. Different chapters of life, same instinct: show up where you can be useful.
Book a free 30-minute call (via Cal.com). You'll leave with a clear picture of your biggest tech weak spot and the first thing to fix. No invoice. No pitch.
Pick a time that works for you. No back-and-forth emails needed. The call is with me, Sree, not a salesperson.
sree@timberleaconsulting.ca
Halifax, Nova Scotia, serving partners across Canada
You'll get a reply from me, Sree, within one business day.
What information we collect, why we collect it, and what you can ask us to do with it, written the way we'd explain it to you in person.
Last updated July 4, 2026.
This website belongs to Timberlea Consulting. That's me, Sree Roy, working out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. If you ever have a question about your information, email me at sree@timberleaconsulting.ca and you'll hear back from a person, not a form.
Only what you hand us, plus a little we need to keep the site safe:
We don't make you create an account, and we don't follow you around the web.
We don't sell your information, and we never will.
You only join our mailing list if you choose to, by ticking the opt-in box on the contact form, or by subscribing in the footer. That tick or that subscription is your clear go-ahead (your express consent) for us to email you. You can leave any time: every email has a one-click unsubscribe link, or you can email sree@timberleaconsulting.ca and I'll take you off.
To run the website and our email without a big in-house setup, we rely on a few trusted outside services. Each one gets only what it needs to do its job:
Some of these companies are based outside Canada (in the United States and Europe) so your information may be handled there, under their own privacy commitments.
Our own copy of your message lives in a secure Cloudflare database. We keep what you send for as long as we need it to help you, and, if you've subscribed, for as long as you stay subscribed. Want it gone sooner? Ask us, and we'll delete it.
Your information is encrypted (scrambled so others can't read it) both on its way to us and where we store it. The keys and passwords that protect it stay on our servers, never in the code your browser downloads. Day-to-day, only Sree has access.
Under Canadian privacy law (PIPEDA), you can ask us what information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Email sree@timberleaconsulting.ca and we'll sort it out, no charge, no hassle.
We like to know which pages are useful, so we use two measurement tools. The first, Cloudflare Web Analytics, is cookie-free and doesn't track you across other websites. It simply counts visits. The second, Google Analytics, is optional and stays off until you say yes. When you first visit, a small banner asks whether you're okay with it. If you accept, Google Analytics saves small files called cookies in your browser and shows us things like which pages you read and whether you arrived from a search or a link. That information goes to Google, which may store it on servers in the United States. We use it to understand our traffic, never to advertise to you, and we have not turned on Google's advertising features. If you decline, the site works exactly the same.
Changed your mind about Google Analytics? Choose again and the banner will come back. Saying no also clears any Google Analytics cookies already in your browser.
The one other thing we save in your browser is your light-or-dark theme choice, so the site remembers how you like it. And no advertising trackers.
If we change how we handle your information, we'll update this page and change the date at the top. If a change is important, we'll say so plainly.
Questions about any of this? Email sree@timberleaconsulting.ca. Happy to walk you through it.
