Four areas. One practice. Built for small business.
Most of our work sits in four places: getting your platforms in order, getting the numbers honest, using AI for the boring bits, and keeping you on the right side of cyber and privacy law. All of it designed for owner-operators, family businesses, and regional operators across Australia and New Zealand. The kind of business the big firms usually price out of the conversation.
Dynamics 365, HubSpot, Zoho, Shopify.
These four cover most of what a small business actually needs: a place for customers, a place for stock and money, a place for the website or shop, and a thread joining them. We set them up so the numbers match each other at the end of the week and the team does not keep their real records in a spreadsheet on the side.
We lean toward what fits the business, not what pays the biggest partner margin. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is often the right fit when stock, jobs, and invoicing are central. Its finance module is a serious alternative to the usual Xero or MYOB setup once a business outgrows them. HubSpot or Zoho for customer and sales work, depending on team size and budget. Shopify for the storefront when you sell online. All four talk to each other well enough if the setup is honest from the start. If your books already live in Xero, MYOB, or Business Central, we meet you there.
Typical work: a first-time setup done without drama, a rescue of something that was started and never finished, or a quiet tidy-up of a stack that grew by accident. Short discovery, a fixed scope in plain English, and a build done alongside your people rather than handed down to them.
One honest dashboard beats ten half-built ones.
Data is only useful if it changes a decision. For a small business the decision is usually something simple and real: which jobs are actually making money, which customers are worth chasing, which stock is sitting too long, how long the week's cash will last. We build the small number of reports that answer those questions in a way you can trust on a Monday morning.
We use what is already in your stack. Dynamics reports, HubSpot and Zoho dashboards, Shopify analytics, and Power BI or Google Looker Studio when something stitched together is needed. Before any of that, we tidy the data underneath (product codes, customer records, job types) because a pretty dashboard on bad data is worse than no dashboard.
Typical work: a reporting audit that cuts the chart count in half, a Power BI or Looker Studio build tied to Dynamics, HubSpot, Zoho, or Shopify, and a monthly rhythm so the numbers get looked at, not just produced.
Use the sensible bits. Skip the theatre.
Most small businesses do not need an AI strategy. They need two or three workflows that save their team hours a week and do not embarrass them in front of a customer. Quoting faster. Drafting the response to the incoming email. Turning a phone call into a job card. Summarising the month. Writing the listing. Catching the mistake before it goes out.
We start with Copilot inside the tools you already pay for (Microsoft 365, Dynamics, HubSpot) because that is where the hours live. Where it helps, we extend with Copilot Studio, ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. Model choice follows the task, not the fashion. Every workflow has a human in the loop by default, sensible guardrails, and a simple measure of whether it actually saved time. If a plain automation would do, a plain automation wins.
Typical work: a short AI readiness session for the owner and the team, a handful of workflow builds (quotes, emails, reports, knowledge capture), and light training so the people using the tools understand them well enough to say no to the silly ideas.
We take AU and NZ cyber law seriously, because the regulators do.
A lot of small businesses still believe they are too small to be a target, and that the law only bites the big end of town. Neither is true any more. Since late 2024, Australia's amended Privacy Act carries civil penalties up to the greater of $50 million, three times the benefit obtained, or 30 percent of adjusted turnover. The Cyber Security Act 2024 added mandatory ransomware payment reporting, minimum standards for smart devices, and an information-sharing safe harbour through the National Cyber Security Coordinator. The small-business turnover exemption (under $3 million) is being dismantled, not extended. Across the Tasman, the NZ Privacy Act 2020 already requires notification of serious-harm breaches as soon as practicable, and failing to notify is a criminal offence.
We work with all of it in plain English. Where you sit today, what "reasonable steps" actually means for your business, what an auditor or cyber insurer is going to ask for, and what to do before an incident, not after. We lean on the ACSC Essential Eight as the technical baseline (application control, patching, MFA, admin privileges, macros, hardening, backups, OS patching) and get small businesses to Maturity Level 1 without pretending it needs to be a six-figure programme. In New Zealand we map the same work onto CERT NZ's Critical Controls and the NZ Information Security Manual where it applies.
Typical work: a baseline Cyber Check (start with the free tool below), a short readiness review against Essential Eight and the Privacy Act, Microsoft 365 hardening (conditional access, MFA enforcement, safe attachments, audit), SPF, DKIM, DMARC and DNSSEC tidy-up so your email is not spoofable, breach-response runbooks for both AU and NZ obligations, and light training so your team can spot the phish before it lands.
Twenty years at the big end of town.
Before Company31 became an SMB practice, the same person leading your work led enterprise programmes on SAP S/4HANA, Salesforce, and NetSuite, for banks, carmakers, retailers, and large not-for-profits. Programme recoveries, governance boards, steering committees, the lot. PRINCE2 Practitioner underneath. That experience is why the small-business work is fast, safe, and honest: we have seen what goes wrong when projects are run badly, and we have no interest in repeating it at your expense.
We still take the occasional enterprise engagement where it suits. But the centre of gravity of this practice is now firmly on the side of small and mid-sized businesses across Australia and New Zealand. That is where good senior help is hardest to find, and where it makes the biggest difference.
Work with Company31.
Engagements run from a single advisory call through to a few months of hands-on work alongside your team. The starting point is the same: bring the situation, not the brief.