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Colour & Code

AI for small businesses in the Kawartha Lakes:

The hard parts are already built.

A knowledge base that holds what your business knows, enrichment that joins it up, triage that catches what nobody has seen yet, and a planner that turns all of it into the day's work. We shape it around your business, you connect what you already run, and your people work with it.

Start a conversationNot decided what AI is for? Start with strategy

how it gets built:

Three moves, and then it is yours.

This page starts after the decision. Where AI fits your business, what to do first and what to leave alone is its own piece of work, and it has its own page. What follows is how the thing gets built once that is settled.

  1. Model

    We work out your business model with you.

    What the business is actually made of, and what it has to pay attention to: which pieces matter, how they relate, and which ones carry consequences. Everything after this is built on that model, and it is yours.

    Two people sitting across from each other, talking it through.
  2. Connect

    Your systems feed it, and keep feeding it.

    Email, phone, accounting, documents, calendars and whatever else the work runs through. Some of it you connect yourself in an afternoon, the awkward ones we do with you, and then it fills in as the work happens.

    Two people standing apart, each reading the same red booklet.
  3. Work with it

    Your people ask it things, and it does the work.

    Questions answered from your own information, the repetitive jobs set up to run on their own, and the reports somebody used to build by hand. It gets better at your business as the people using it correct it.

    A person settled in a chair with the booklet open.

The answer is cheap. The consequence is not. We build so that a person stays responsible for what happens next.

Start a conversationHow we keep it responsible

connect your stuff:

Connect all of your stuff.

Email, phone, accounting, documents, calendars, the CRM, the till, the shared drive nobody has tidied since 2019. If a system has a way in, it can feed the knowledge base, and most of them have one.

  • Gmail
  • QuickBooks
  • Google Drive
  • Slack
  • Shopify
  • HubSpot
  • Outlook
  • Xero
  • Dropbox
  • Zoom
  • Square
  • Asana
  • DocuSign
  • Google Calendar
  • Stripe
  • SharePoint
  • Microsoft Teams
  • WooCommerce
  • Salesforce
  • Twilio
  • Sage
  • OneDrive
  • Trello
  • Mailchimp
  • Typeform
  • Jira
  • Notion
  • PayPal
  • Box
  • Zendesk
  • Airtable
  • Zoho CRM
  • Intercom
  • Monday.com
  • Calendly
  • Google Analytics
  • Zapier
  • Make
Your knowledge base
  • Enrichment
  • Triage
  • The day's plan

Marks are examples of the kinds of systems a business like yours already runs. What yours connects to is settled in the build, not here.

the technology:

Four parts, and one assistant in front of them.

We don't begin with a collection of AI products and look for places to install them. We begin with what your business has to understand, connect and carry. These are the parts that do it, and your people meet one assistant rather than four systems.

Assistant

  1. Knowledge Base

    Everything above feeds this. Your business already remembers it all, just scattered across documents, inboxes and a few people's heads; this holds it in one connected place, and keeps track of who is allowed to see what.

    Ask us about this

  2. Enrichment

    A new message rarely makes sense on its own. This joins it to the conversation it came from and the promise that came out of it, so nobody starts from nothing.

    Ask us about this

  3. Triage

    More arrives each day than anyone can read properly. This works out what deserves attention, and hands anything unusual to a person rather than guessing.

    Ask us about this

  4. Work Planner

    Good decisions get lost between the meeting and the doing. This turns them into the tasks and follow-ups that carry them through, which is what a person actually opens in the morning.

    Ask us about this

Four parts, one shared understanding of your business. Not held by whoever happens to know, but available to everyone who needs it.

case studies:

Two businesses. One idea: give people better access to what the organization already knows.

Described by sector rather than by name. The work is real.

01Case studyMedia publishing company

One intelligent layer across the entire publishing operation.

Publishing involves far more than articles. Editorial workflows, website publishing, advertising sales and fulfilment, channel management, editions, clients and internal knowledge were spread across different systems and processes.

Colour and Code created a unified AI assistant that connects these parts of the organization through one conversational interface. It can surface information, understand relationships between data, enrich content and records, and help staff move between editorial, advertising and operational work without constantly switching tools.

The goal was not to replace the people who understand the publication and its community. It was to give them better access to what the organization already knows. Less time searching, transferring information and managing repetitive administrative work means more time for journalism, creative thinking, advertiser relationships and meaningful engagement with the communities they serve.

  • Surfaces information from any part of the operation
  • Understands the relationships between data
  • Enriches content and records
  • Moves between editorial, advertising and operations

The technology connects the systems. The people focus on the relationships, judgement and ideas that make the publication valuable.

Inside the system

  • The assistant's start screen asking How can I help? above a question box.
    Ask it anything
  • The data map: a network of connected record types.
    How the records connect
  • A recent changes report with totals and a daily bar chart of updates by business area.
    Every change, traced
  • An overview dashboard with workload totals, a year of incoming messages as a stacked chart, and a heatmap.
    What's waiting, at a glance

02Case studyProperty management company

A connected view of properties, people and work.

Property management depends on information scattered across contracts, units, service requests, tasks, communications, vendors and operational systems. Finding the full story behind a property or issue can require piecing together information from several different places.

Colour and Code created an AI assistant that brings those sources together into one interactive knowledge and operations layer. Staff can ask questions conversationally, understand the context around a unit or request, retrieve relevant documents and communications, enrich records and see how information across the organization connects.

That gives employees more useful information at the moment they need it, helping them make better-informed decisions without spending their day hunting through systems. It also helps teams respond to tenants, property owners and service partners with greater context and continuity.

  • Answers questions conversationally
  • Shows the context around a unit or request
  • Retrieves the right documents and communications
  • Enriches records and shows how they connect

By taking on more of the searching, organizing and administrative work, AI gives people more time for the human side of property management: solving problems, communicating clearly and building stronger relationships.

Inside the system

  • The inbox: a tenant's message matched to a unit and building, with the assistant's suggested next step for someone to approve.
    A message matched to its unit
  • A task list for the week: each task with its type, property, planned date, deadline and status.
    The week's tasks, by property
  • A list of building assets grouped by type, with operational status, condition and expected life.
    Building assets and their condition
  • A relationship report with value totals and a line chart comparing two directions over a year.
    Goodwill with tenants, both ways
  • An operational history report with the assistant open in a side panel.
    The assistant beside a report

Yours would be described the same way: by what it does, not by what it's called.

Tell us about your business

responsibly, which means:

Every advantage comes with a bargain. We make them on purpose.

Almost every advantage AI creates produces a tension somewhere else. Speed in exchange for what? Efficiency at the expense of whom? Knowledge captured from whom, and for whose benefit? These are the bargains inside every AI project. Here is how we make them.

  1. Speed in exchange for what?

    We tell you when AI is the wrong answer.

    Some problems are a process problem, or a people problem. We say so, even when it costs us the work.

  2. Answers, but who answers for them?

    A person stays accountable for anything that affects a customer.

    AI can take part in a decision. It can't look someone in the eye. That part stays with your people.

  3. Knowledge captured from whom, and for whose benefit?

    Your data stays yours, and stays where it's allowed to be.

    We know what the system can see and who can see it, and we can show you.

  4. Convenience instead of what?

    Nothing answers your customers unsupervised until it has earned it.

    It drafts, a person sends, and the leash gets longer only as the record gets better.

  5. Efficiency at the expense of whom?

    The people doing the work help change it.

    Your staff know where the friction is. They also know what it's like to be asked for reasons their job should shrink. We ask differently.

  6. Output, but who is learning?

    Some work makes something and makes somebody.

    We don't automate away the tasks your next experienced person is learning on. The bottom rung stays.

When a decision conflicts with one of these, the decision changes.

proof:

Brands we have elevated.

Municipal, healthcare, automotive, hospitality and professional services, across the Kawartha Lakes and beyond.

All our clients
  • City of Kawartha Lakes
  • McDonald's
  • Kawartha Honda
  • Race Toyota
  • Ross Memorial Hospital
  • Ampere
  • Spencer West
  • Kawartha Land Trust

Bring us the decision. We will build it.

If the strategy is settled, this is the part that makes it real. If it isn't, start there instead and come back.

Start a conversation Work out what AI is for first
The Colour and Code team, together in the studio.

The people on the other end of the decision.

Colour and Code, Kawartha Lakes