Worth a 30-minute conversation?
ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini, picked for your firm, with the right licence, rules for client data, a staff AI policy and hands-on training. It drafts, you approve. I'm Balu, Kove is just me, and I do the work myself. I work from Christchurch with firms across New Zealand.
If you are looking for an AI consultant for a small firm anywhere in New Zealand, the NZ-wide AI consultant page covers how I work; this page is the Christchurch version.
I pick the tool that suits your firm (ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini), get the right licence in place, write down the rules for client data and give your staff a one-page AI policy. Then I train them on your own email and documents and build your first three use cases. Every one of them drafts and you approve: nothing sends or books on its own. It is a two to three week engagement, scoped and priced on the free call, and the detail is in the AI set up safely block on the services page.
Most of what saves a Canterbury business real hours has no artificial intelligence in it at all. It's plain automation: information moving between systems without anyone retyping it, approvals that chase themselves, documents that generate on their own, reports that are ready before the Monday meeting.
AI earns its place in the parts that need judgement on messy input. Reading an emailed invoice that's laid out differently every time. Sorting a support queue by what people meant rather than what they typed. Drafting a reply that a human then checks. Those are real jobs and they're worth doing well.
The distinction matters because one of them is much cheaper than the other, and plenty of people will happily sell you the expensive one for a job that didn't need it. I'll tell you which one you're looking at before you spend anything.
This page is Christchurch-framed; for the full picture of who Kove works with across New Zealand and who it does not, see the Power Platform and AI consultant page.
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The drafting example is part of AI set up safely. The other cards are custom builds or rescue work, scoped separately from the setup package.
A staff member pastes an enquiry that your client-data policy allows into the chosen tool. AI drafts a reply, they check the facts and edit it, then send it themselves. I hand over the policy and train your team on that routine.
Unpaid invoices, unsigned quotes, unreturned forms. Software is better at politely asking the same question every week than any person is, and it never forgets.
When off-the-shelf software fits about 70% of how you work and the other 30% is where your margin lives. I build the tool around your business instead of the other way round.
Power Apps, automated flows and Copilot agents on the Microsoft stack you're already buying. Often no new subscription at all. More on that here.
Agents that read messy input, sort it, and hand the hard cases to a human, a long way from a chatbot on your website. See what that looks like in practice.
An automation that breaks monthly. An app one person understands. I audit it, fix what's worth fixing, rebuild the rest, and document it so it never hangs on one person again.
If the process changes every time you run it, automating it makes things worse. If nobody in the business agrees what the process is, that's the problem, and no software fixes it. And under ten minutes a month, the maths doesn't work, so I'll say so.
I'd rather lose a job than sell you one that won't pay for itself. That's easier for me than most, because Kove is one person with low overheads and no sales targets to hit.
The fastest way to understand how work really happens is to watch someone do it for an hour. Over screen-share that's a recorded session I can replay, so nothing gets lost before I build anything.
The gap between how a process is described in a meeting and how it runs at 4pm on a Friday is where most automation projects fail. A recorded session closes that gap without needing anyone in the room.
A free 30-minute call, where I ask how your week runs and tell you plainly whether there's anything worth automating. No prep needed and no obligation. If AI setup suits your firm, the next step is AI set up safely, a two to three week engagement scoped and priced on the call. Custom automations and builds are scoped separately. Most builds are scoped on the free call; if the process needs mapping first, the $3,500 Workflow Review gives you a written plan you keep whoever builds it, and its fee is credited against a build started within 90 days. The full ladder is on the services page.
No. I'm based in Christchurch and I work with businesses across New Zealand, all of it over video call and screen-share.
AI set up safely is a two to three week engagement, scoped and priced on the free call. I pick ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini for your firm, put the right licence and client-data rules in place, provide a one-page staff AI policy, train your team on your own email and documents, and build your first three use cases. It drafts, you approve. Custom automations and builds are scoped separately.
Custom automations are scoped separately from AI set up safely. Straightforward single automations typically land between $4,000 and $8,000. Bigger builds like a custom CRM or job-tracking system run $10,000 to $22,000. Most builds are scoped on the free 30-minute call. If the process needs mapping first, the $3,500 Workflow Review gives you a written plan you keep whoever builds it, and its fee is credited against a build started within 90 days.
If someone in your business retypes the same information into a second system, chases the same people every week, or builds the same report by hand every month, you're ready. If your process changes every time you run it, or nobody agrees what the process is, you're not. Fix that first, and automating gets much cheaper.
Usually not. Most of what saves a Canterbury business real hours is plain automation with no language model anywhere near it: moving data between systems, chasing approvals, generating documents. AI earns its place when a job needs judgement on messy input, like reading an emailed invoice or triaging a support queue. I'll tell you which one your job is, and the answer is often the cheaper one.
No, everything runs remotely. Watching a recorded screen-share of someone doing the job for an hour tells me nearly as much as being in the room, and it means the same process works whether you're in Christchurch or Invercargill.
You keep everything. Source code in your GitHub, credentials in your accounts, hosting on your bill, and documentation written for whoever comes next. Nothing I build depends on me still being around, because a one-person supplier that leaves you stranded is a bad deal and I'd rather not sell one.