If you know AI should be helping by now but can't see where to start, we work out what your current work costs, estimate what automating each piece would return, and price each build before you decide anything. Then we deliver the builds you choose, and Evolve keeps them running and building as you grow.
We map how your business runs with you and the people who run the work that repeats, because they know where it breaks. We work out what your current work costs you, estimate what automating each piece would return, and build first whatever pays back the most. Every build gets an estimated price and return in writing before you decide whether to build anything. For a business with many teams, many systems or compliance obligations, the full Systems Diagnostic, from A$3,900.
Once you've signed a delivery engagement for the items you choose, we design each one with you first, then deliver exactly what it describes. Sometimes that's existing software or AI systems set up properly; sometimes it's automations built for your measured workflows; often it includes the Zeroth Business OS install, because the framework makes AI across the whole business usable and expandable, on shared context with role-based access and an audit trail. We test all of it on your live data, then deploy and run a training session, so your team is using it from day one. Delivery usually starts from A$5,000, paid up front or monthly.
Evolve is the optional monthly plan that starts at go-live. Each month we build the next items on your ranked list, each priced and ranked by estimated return for that price, so something new goes live. It also covers monitoring, a monthly session with your team, the Monthly Status Report and a quarterly health check. It is quoted with your delivery engagement. If you decline it, everything is handed over on your own accounts.
Where your build needs a platform, it runs on the Zeroth Business OS framework. How each layer works in your business.
L1
Foundation
What your business does, who your clients are, how you write, and how work gets done: how a proposal gets made, how an invoice gets raised, what "done" means. Captured as we map how your business runs, so when you ask for a proposal it reads like your team wrote it. New staff can read it from their first day.
WhyWithout it, every conversation starts by explaining who you are. That is why AI in most businesses gives generic answers.
L2
Database
A database in your business's name holding the things you have to be able to count: time, projects, clients and pipeline, tasks, tickets, leave and expenses, plus a read-only mirror of your invoices. "Which projects have unbilled hours?" becomes a database query with an exact answer, and each person sees only the rows their role allows.
WhyDocuments can't count. Anything you need to filter, total, invoice or reconcile needs a database behind it, with permissions the database itself enforces.
L3
Integrations
The single connection between the AI and the systems that reach the outside world: Xero, email, calendar, payments. This is what lets it draft your invoices from approved timesheets and send email from your mailboxes. Every action is permissioned by role and set to the level of approval your business chooses, and all of it is written to an audit log that nobody can edit, including us.
WhyOnce an AI can send an email or issue an invoice, "usually right" is not good enough. Each action has to run at the level your business sets for it: run it, show a preview and wait for a yes, or hold it for a person to release after signing in again.
L4
Workspace
Your existing SharePoint or Drive, permissions unchanged: the AI acting for someone opens what that person can already open. Ask for a document and you get a file in your template, saved in the right folder. Nothing is migrated and we take no copy.
WhyMoving your files onto a vendor's platform puts your documents under the vendor's control. Staying on your own setup keeps your permissions as they are and lets you leave at any time.
L5
Intelligence
The AI model, used directly from Claude Cowork or Microsoft Copilot: conversation, role-scoped dashboards of live numbers, and scheduled work like a Monday brief or a monthly invoice batch, all on the same permissions and the same audit trail. When better models are released, this layer is replaced and the four layers below keep your knowledge, data and history where they are.
WhyModels change every few months. The other four layers stay the same when they do. A business whose AI is one vendor's chatbot has to start again when it changes vendor.
The first step is a short call. Every build is priced in writing before you decide, and delivery usually starts from A$5,000, paid up front or monthly. All figures AUD, ex GST.
The first step
15–20 minutes · with Peter McEvey · online
For a business with many teams, many systems or compliance obligations, the full Systems Diagnostic, from A$3,900.
Book a callThe deliverables
Then, if you choose
Delivery usually starts from A$5,000, paid up front or monthly · live on the go-live date in your delivery engagement
We deliver the builds you choose, each item priced in writing before you agree to the build. Often that includes the Business OS install: the platform that makes AI across the business usable and expandable.
The deliverables
Ongoing
From go-live · optional · quoted with your delivery engagement
Evolve is quoted against your delivery engagement, on what gets built. Each month it builds the next items on your ranked list, ranked by estimated return for the price.
The deliverables
Three other kinds of offer turn up when you go looking. Each one leaves you with something different.
| AI training courses | DIY install days and workshops | A free audit from an agency | Zeroth | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you end up with | A team that knows the tools | A setup on each laptop, built in a day by whoever attended | A recommendation for whatever that agency builds | Your current work costed, the return on each automation estimated and each build priced, in writing, before you decide |
| What happens next | How the work runs stays the same | Nobody is responsible for it afterwards, and most of your work never touches it | The agency builds what it sells | Built best estimated return for the price first, then kept running and improving through Evolve, if you choose |
Including us. Put all five to everyone on your shortlist and write the answers down. The differences between providers show up here faster than in any capability deck. Our answers are under each question.
If the deliverable is a strategy document, the price is too high at any number. If the system stops working the day you stop paying, you were renting it.
Ours: your Business OS, running on your own database and your own Microsoft 365 or Google tenancy, on accounts you own and pay for from day one. Your database is yours. We have access to build and maintain it. If Zeroth closed tomorrow it would keep running.
Integrations break. Vendors change their APIs, models get retired. If the answer is "give us a call", ask what the call costs.
Ours: Evolve, quoted with your delivery engagement, before you decide whether to take it. Month to month on 30 days' notice. It covers monitoring, monthly build work down your ranked list and a monthly session with your team. It covers our services only: your database and other subscriptions stay on your own accounts, paid by you. If you decline it, everything is handed over on your own accounts.
The expensive version of AI consulting is the one you have to buy twice.
Ours, and this is where we're least flattering: your team runs the OS from day one. That's what the role groups, the written instructions and the monthly session are for. Building new automations on top stays our job. Anyone promising you'll be fully self-sufficient in ninety days is describing an outcome we've never seen. What changes is the price: once the platform is in place, each new automation is cheaper to build.
You should be able to see what has shipped and what is queued, at no extra cost.
Ours: a build goes live on the date set in your delivery engagement, with a written update at every stage and a design you sign off before the build starts. On a job this short, fortnightly reviews would cover most of the project. You see it running instead.
If the price is hard to get, that tells you something on its own.
Ours: for most businesses, nothing. Every build gets an estimated price and return in writing before you decide whether to build anything. Delivery usually starts from A$5,000, paid up front or monthly. For a more complex business, the full Systems Diagnostic is quoted to its size and complexity, from A$3,900.
If you want your business running more efficiently and you're not sure where to start, book a call. On the call we learn about your business and answer your questions, and if it's a fit, we agree where to start.