Services · Fixed fees, agreed before we start
Less busywork. Teams that use AI well.
We help small and mid-sized businesses automate the busywork that slows their people down, and get their teams using AI well and safely.
Every engagement has a fixed scope, a fixed fee and a deliverable you keep.
Two ways to start
- Automate a workflow. Begin with the 2-week AI Opportunity Workshop. See how it works
- Train your team. Practical, safe AI skills for leaders and staff. See training
A free first conversation. No slides, no obligation.
Automate the busywork
Four steps. Each one useful on its own.
| Step | Stage | What it is | Timing | Investment (CAD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | First conversation | A working conversation about your business and what’s slowing it down. You leave with an honest read on whether, and where, AI could help. | 30–45 minutes | Free |
| 1 | AI Opportunity Workshop | We spend time with the people doing the work, map one area of your business and give you a written go / not yet / no-go on the best opportunity. | 2 weeks | from $2,500 + HST |
| 2 | Design Sprint | We turn one opportunity into a plan you can evaluate: the workflow, the success measure, where people review, the running costs and a fixed quote to build. | 2–3 weeks | scoped per project |
| 3 | Focused Pilot | We build and test one workflow with your team, on real tasks, against a success measure agreed before work starts. | 4–8 weeks | scoped per project |
| 4 | Run & Support | We keep it working, help your team use it well, and improve it as your business changes. | Monthly | scoped per project |
Prices are plus HST. Every later stage is a fixed fee, scoped per project and quoted in writing after the workshop, so you’ll know the scope, timing and cost before it begins.
01
AI Opportunity Workshop
Find the work worth fixing first, and get an honest answer on whether AI belongs there.
For owners, operators and operations leads who know AI matters, have watched people experiment with ChatGPT, and want a clear first step before anyone buys tools.
What happens over 2 weeks
- Kickoff (60 min). We agree on your goals, the area of the business we’ll look at, and the rules for handling information.
- Time with your people (2–4 sessions, 45–60 min each). Clerks, assistants, bookkeepers, associates: whoever actually does the work walks us through how it really gets done.
- Working session (2 hours). Together we map the workflow, mark where time and attention are lost, and score each opportunity.
- Readout (60 min). We walk your decision-makers through the findings and our recommendation. There’s no pressure to decide on the call.
What you get: the Opportunity Brief
6–10 pages, plain language, yours to keep.
- The problem, in one agreed paragraph
- A map of how the work moves today, with the friction marked
- Every opportunity we looked at, scored for value, effort and risk, including what to leave alone
- The one opportunity we’d pursue first, and why
- A rough return sketch built from your own numbers, with every assumption written down
- Risk and human-review notes: what a wrong answer would cost, and who should check what
- A go / not yet / no-go recommendation. Sometimes the answer is “fix the process first” or “use a tool you already have.”
- A recommended next step with an indicative scope and fee, or a non-Vilka path if that suits you better
- One 30-minute follow-up call within 30 days, for questions as your team digests the brief
- Your time
- The sponsor spends about 3–4 hours in total; 2–4 team members spend about an hour each.
- Access
- No access to your live systems. Redacted or sample documents are enough.
- Investment
- from $2,500 + HST, as a fixed fee agreed in writing before kickoff. If you go on to a Design Sprint or Pilot within 30 days, half the workshop fee is credited.
Our clarity promise
If the readout doesn’t give you a clear go, not yet or no-go on a defined opportunity, we’ll keep working (up to four more hours) until it does.
02
Design Sprint
A plan you can evaluate, challenge and decide on.
For businesses with one clear opportunity that want to know exactly what would be built, what it would cost to run, and where people stay in charge, before committing to a build.
What happens over 2–3 weeks
- We design the future workflow with the people who’ll use it.
- We compare tool options, including what your business already licences, with running costs stated plainly.
- We decide where a person reviews, approves or overrides, and what happens when the system is unsure.
- We agree one success measure and how we’ll measure the baseline.
What you get
- A written solution plan: the workflow, scope and a clear out-of-scope list
- The success measure and how it will be measured
- Human-review and failure design (what happens when it’s wrong)
- Data-handling notes: what information is used, where it goes, and what never goes in
- Tool options with monthly running costs
- A fixed quote for the Pilot
- Investment
- scoped per project, quoted as a fixed fee after the workshop.
- Can we skip it?
- Sometimes. If the workshop shows a small, well-defined opportunity, we fold a short design phase into the start of the Pilot at no extra cost, and we’ll tell you so.
03
Focused Pilot
One workflow, built carefully and tested on real work.
For businesses ready to see a solution working, in their own tools and accounts, with their own people.
What happens
- We build one workflow: an automation, an assistant, or a connection between systems you already use.
- We test it with your team on real tasks and refine it until it does the job.
- A person reviews every output wherever a mistake would matter.
- We measure it against the success measure we agreed before starting.
- We document it, train the people who’ll use it, and hand it over.
| Comparison | Pilot Standard | Pilot Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | One workflow, up to 2 connected systems | One workflow, up to 4 systems, or heavy document reading and sorting |
| Timing | 4–6 weeks | 6–8 weeks |
- Investment
- scoped per project, quoted as a fixed fee after the workshop or Design Sprint, with payment in stages tied to the work.
- Software and usage costs
- Licences, AI model usage and hosting are billed by the vendor directly to you, in your business’s own accounts. You’ll see the estimate before you sign.
- You own it
- The workflow, its configuration and its documentation are yours.
- A way to stop
- Every Pilot has written conditions for pausing or stopping. If it isn’t working, we say so.
04
Run & Support
Keep it working. Keep improving it.
| Comparison | Run | Run + Improve |
|---|---|---|
| For | One live workflow that needs to keep working | Businesses that want steady, small improvements and someone to call |
| Monitoring and fixes when tools change | Included | Included |
| Time included each month | Up to 2 hours | Up to 7 hours |
| Response | Within 2 business days | Next business day |
| Check-in | Short written monthly update | 45-minute monthly review |
| Staff refreshers and new-hire onboarding | — | Included |
| Small new automations | — | Included |
- Investment
- scoped per project. A fixed monthly fee, quoted before you sign. Month to month, with 30 days’ notice either way. No long contracts. For systems we didn’t build, we start with a one-time review.
Training
Help your people use AI well, and safely.
For businesses where people are already experimenting with AI (or are afraid to) and leaders want everyone on the same page about what’s useful, what’s safe, and what never goes into an AI tool.
Every session is hands-on, built around your business’s own (redacted) examples and the AI tools you already licence, and taught in plain language.
| Session | What it is |
|---|---|
| Leadership briefing | 90 minutes for owners and leaders: what AI can and can’t do for a business like yours, the real risks, and the decisions you need to make. Up to 10 people. |
| AI at Work, Safely (half day) | 3.5 hours, up to 15 people. Safe use with client information, practical tasks, checking AI output, and a one-page cheat sheet. |
| AI at Work, Hands-on (full day) | 6 hours, up to 15 people. Everything in the half day, plus deeper practice on your team’s own recurring tasks. |
| AI-use guideline starter (add-on) | A plain-language draft of do’s and don’ts for your tools, for your own review. |
| AI office hours | 60 minutes a month, by video, for questions and new-tool walkthroughs after training. |
- Investment
- from $750 + HST. Each session is a fixed fee, quoted after a short discovery call based on format and group size. On-site anywhere in the GTA, or by video.
- What people leave with
- A clear sense of what’s safe, two or three tasks they’ll try the next day, and a cheat sheet they’ll actually keep.
What this looks like in practice.
The work that wears people down tends to look similar: re-keying information, chasing documents, rebuilding the same documents, and answering the same questions.
Most businesses don’t need an “AI transformation.” They need one stuck workflow fixed properly, with confidentiality respected and a person still making every judgment call.
What follows are examples of the kind of workflows a Workshop might look at. They aren’t case studies or past results. Every business is different, and in your workshop the right answer could be one of these, something else, or “not AI.”
Intake and onboarding
- Today
- New customers fill in forms, send documents in pieces, and someone re-types the details into the systems you already use.
- What it could look like
- One structured intake that checks for missing information and prepares the record for your team to confirm.
- Who stays in charge
- Your team verifies the record before work begins.
Document chasing
- Today
- People track what’s outstanding across email and spreadsheets, and send reminders by hand.
- What it could look like
- A checklist for each job, with drafted reminders for someone to approve and a simple view of what’s still missing.
- Who stays in charge
- Your team approves every message that goes to a customer.
Quoting and proposals
- Today
- Quotes and proposals are rebuilt from old files, with scope, prices and names re-entered each time, and errors caught late.
- What it could look like
- A first draft from your approved templates and the intake details, with the parts that change highlighted for review.
- Who stays in charge
- The person responsible edits and approves every quote. The templates stay yours.
Scheduling
- Today
- Booking, rescheduling and reminders bounce between inboxes, calendars and phone calls.
- What it could look like
- A request becomes a clear set of options, with a drafted confirmation ready for someone to send.
- Who stays in charge
- Your team confirms the time. Nothing is booked without a person.
Reporting
- Today
- The same numbers are pulled from a few systems and rebuilt into a report or update every week.
- What it could look like
- A draft report assembled from the sources you already use, with anything unusual flagged for review.
- Who stays in charge
- Someone on your team checks the figures before the report goes out.
Customer FAQs
- Today
- The same questions interrupt the people doing the work all day.
- What it could look like
- Drafted replies from a short library of approved answers and the current status, ready for a person to send.
- Who stays in charge
- Your team reviews anything before it goes out.
Internal knowledge
- Today
- Procedures, past answers and how the work gets done live in a few people’s heads, or in files nobody can find.
- What it could look like
- A plain place to ask, with answers drawn from documents your team has approved, and the source shown.
- Who stays in charge
- Your team decides what is approved. The system suggests; it doesn’t invent the rules.
How we handle confidential information
- A mutual NDA is signed before you share anything.
- The workshop runs on redacted or sample documents, with no access to your live systems.
- Your confidential or personal information never goes into AI tools that keep it or train on it.
- We use only what the work needs, and return or delete materials when the engagement ends.
- Your obligations stay with you, and we design around them: a person on your team reviews anything that matters.
- We’re happy to talk it through with your IT provider.
Also available · AI-assisted websites
A modern website that reads like your business, built in weeks, not months.
A secondary service for businesses that ask. Our main work is automation and AI training.
For businesses whose website no longer matches the quality of their work. We use AI to move fast on the parts that usually stall a website project (first-draft copy, page structure, build), and we spend our time where it matters: getting your services, your people and your tone right.
| Comparison | Refresh | Business Site | Business Site Plus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | A site that works but looks dated or reads poorly | A new or fully rebuilt site | Businesses with several service groups and a larger team |
| Pages | Up to 5 key pages redesigned and rewritten | Up to 15 | Up to 35 |
| Copy | We draft it from a short interview; you approve | Same, plus service pages and bios | Same, for every page |
| Intake | Existing form tidied | A clear intake form that routes to the right inbox | Intake connected to one of your systems, where supported |
| Also included | Mobile, speed, basic search setup, analytics, accessibility pass | Team pages, structure that helps search engines and AI assistants understand your services, a privacy page template, editing handover | People directory, news or insights section, redirects from your old site, staff editing training |
| Timing | 2 weeks | 3–4 weeks | 5–6 weeks |
- Investment
- scoped per project, quoted as a fixed fee after a discovery call. Optional Website Care covers updates, backups, monitoring and small edits, month to month.
- You own it. Your domain, hosting account, content and site are in your business’s name.
- Your rules stay yours. We write in plain, accurate language. Your business approves every claim before anything goes live.
- Not included: domain and hosting fees (paid directly to your provider), photography, logo or brand design, and ongoing SEO campaigns. We’ll tell you if you need any of them and who can help.
Who you’ll work with.
Erast Nam, founder. Erast has worked hands-on with AI for almost four years. Day to day he implements AI at a mid-sized software company: automating legacy workflows, putting AI security controls in place, and building tools people actually use. He leads every Vilka engagement personally.
Questions we’re often asked.
What does it cost?
The Workshop is from $2,500 + HST and training is from $750 + HST. Design Sprints, Pilots, ongoing support and websites are scoped per project and quoted after the workshop or a discovery call. Every engagement is a fixed fee agreed in writing before it starts. There’s no hourly billing.
Do we have to start with the Workshop?
No. Many businesses start with a training session, and some with a website. If something else would serve you better, we’ll say so.
Why would an AI consultancy build websites?
Because we use AI to build them faster, and pass the saving on. A website is also often where client intake starts, so it helps to have one partner who understands both. Every site is reviewed and finished by a person, not generated and shipped.
Will training tell our people to put client information into ChatGPT?
The opposite. A core part of every session is what must never go into which tools, and how to use the tools your business has approved, with the right settings.
Why is Vilka priced for smaller businesses?
Because Vilka is deliberately lean, not because the work is lighter. You work directly with the founder. There are no layers of account managers, no long discovery phases and no slide decks nobody reads. We start small on purpose, so a business can say yes without a procurement process.
You’re new. Why should we trust you?
That’s a fair question. You’d be among Vilka’s first clients, and we’ll say so plainly. That’s why the first step is a small, fixed-fee workshop with a written brief you keep whether or not we work together again, plus a clarity promise. Your risk is capped at the workshop fee.
How long does it take, and how much of our time?
The workshop takes 2 weeks from kickoff to readout. Your sponsor spends about 3–4 hours in total, and 2–4 team members about an hour each. A Design Sprint takes 2–3 weeks; a Pilot takes 4–8 weeks.
We already tried ChatGPT. Why would this be different?
Free tools are good for drafts. What usually stalls is everything around them: which task, which information is safe to use, who checks the output, and how it fits the way your people actually work. That’s the part we design. Sometimes the answer is a better way to use a tool you already pay for.
Is our client information safe?
We sign a mutual NDA before you share anything, run the workshop on redacted or sample documents, need no access to your live systems, and never put confidential or personal information into AI tools that keep or train on it. For a Pilot, access is agreed in writing, limited to what’s needed, and runs in your own accounts.
Do you advise our customers?
No. We work on operations: how the work moves, and where automation can help. Judgment, advice to your customers and decisions about your obligations stay with your people.
Do we need an IT department or perfect data?
No. Many mid-sized businesses rely on a managed IT provider, and that’s fine. Part of the workshop is checking what information you have and whether it’s suitable to use as it is.
Will this replace people on our team?
That’s not the work we set out to do. We aim to take away the tasks nobody should be doing by hand, so your people have more time for clients, judgment and the work that needs them. If a project’s main goal is cutting jobs, we’ll talk about it openly before deciding whether we’re the right fit.
What if AI isn’t the right answer?
Then we’ll tell you in writing, with what we’d suggest instead. That’s a full result, not a failure.
Can we skip straight to building?
Sometimes. If the problem is already clear and well understood, we’ll say so on the first call. Usually a short workshop is the cheapest way to make sure the build solves the right problem.
Do we own what you build?
Yes. You keep the brief, the plans, and the workflows and documentation built for you, running in your own accounts. Vilka keeps its general methods and templates.
Do you charge HST?
Yes. Published prices are plus HST.
Do you work in person?
Yes. Anywhere in the GTA (Toronto, Vaughan, Markham, Mississauga and nearby), or by video.
Less friction. More possibility.
Bring the busywork.
You don’t need a finished brief. Tell us what’s slowing your business down, and we’ll suggest a useful first step, even if that step isn’t AI.
Automation · AI training · Fixed fees · Based in Toronto