Solve8 is an Australian AI consultancy. We help Tasmanian organisations decide where AI is worth the money, then build it: automating admin and document work, connecting systems that do not talk to each other, cleaning up reporting, and getting Microsoft 365 ready for Copilot, with the data kept in Australia or on your own hardware.
Tasmanian organisations also bring us questions that have nothing to do with AI. We provide IT consulting in Hobart on software selection and cloud, and custom software development for the workflow tools and portals a packaged product does not cover.
Engagements are scoped in writing with a fixed fee per phase. Start with our AI strategy and advisory service, or read how we approach private AI infrastructure if data control is the first question on your list.
We start from the problem in front of you. The organisations below come in every size, from Hobart practices and agencies to operators in the north west, and they share a kind of work automation handles well. If one sounds like your Monday morning, a scoping call will tell you quickly whether there is a project worth doing.
Small finance teams in Tasmania often carry the work a mainland office would split across several people. Invoices, expense claims and supplier statements keyed in by hand are the first place automation gives hours back.
Accounting, legal, engineering and community organisations move content between documents, a practice or client system and the finance platform. Extraction and drafting with a person checking the result removes most of the rekeying.
Operators running lodges, tours and venues have bookings in one platform, rosters in another and accounts in a third, with demand that swings hard with the seasons. Enquiry handling, forecasting and reporting are where the hours go.
Agencies, councils and their suppliers handle personal information under Tasmanian law as well as federal rules, and are rightly cautious about where AI processes it. We design for the audit trail and the hosting question first.
Providers across the state carry the same documentation load as their mainland peers with fewer people to share it. Incident reports, care notes and funding claims are good candidates for extraction with a person checking the result.
Farms, seafood operations and energy businesses collect monitoring, traceability and plant data, then rebuild it by hand for licence reports and buyers. Joining that data up is usually the first job.
Tasmanian enquiries tend to fall into a handful of patterns, several of them shaped by distance and seasonality. Sometimes the right fix involves no AI at all. Our comparison of automation and manual processes covers how to tell the difference.
We trace each reported figure back to the system or spreadsheet it came from, then automate the collection so the report becomes a review of numbers already there.
Data quality before AILegacy finance, practice and booking platforms can usually be reached through the database, scheduled exports or a supported connector. We pick the least fragile route and document it.
Integrating legacy systems with AIEmails and web forms are classified and routed, and a draft reply is ready for a person to check and send. Peak season stops burying the inbox.
Running AI agents in productionOffices and sites on the west coast or out in a channel cannot rely on a cloud round trip. Models can run on local hardware and sync when the link is back.
Running AI offline on local modelsClient files, personal information and contract terms are sensitive. A governed internal assistant on Australian or on-premise hosting gives people a sanctioned option.
How the wrong AI tools leak dataAdvisory work produces a ranked, costed roadmap the board can approve or reject on its merits, with the governance questions answered in writing.
Take the AI readiness assessmentFor a state agency, a health provider or a business holding client records, the hard question about AI is where the data goes. Personal information, client files and commercial figures are not things to send to an overseas service whose training terms nobody has read.
We default to Australian cloud regions and check each vendor's data handling terms before anything is connected. Where that is not enough, we deploy open models on your own servers or a private cloud, so prompts and documents never leave your environment. Our comparison of hosted models and local Ollama sets out the trade-offs in plain terms.
Read more in our data sovereignty guide and in Australian compared with offshore AI development.
Open models running in your server room or private cloud, with no external calls.
Private AI infrastructureLocal inference for sites where a cloud round trip is unreliable, syncing when connected.
Offline AI guideAustralian regions for anything hosted, with vendor terms checked before connection.
Onshore deploymentHosting and access designed so an auditor or a regulator can follow the data.
Regulated industries guideIn a lean team a failed pilot also costs the attention of the few people who keep things running. Advisory work decides where effort should go first, in a costed document you own.
Our article on AI strategy compared with AI implementation explains when to start with advice and when to go straight to a build, and the four week proof of concept framework shows how a first pilot is structured.
Candidate processes ranked by payback and difficulty, sized for a Tasmanian team that cannot spare people for a long program.
Which systems connect, where the data lives, and what runs on site because the connection cannot be trusted.
Build and running costs against current effort, including the seasonal peaks that drive overtime.
Privacy Act and Tasmanian public sector obligations, data residency, and where a person reviews each decision.
A pilot on one process first, so the approach proves itself before a wider budget is committed.
We name the tools that fit, including ones we do not sell. You own the document and can deliver it with anyone.
Agencies, councils and head offices in Hobart and Launceston mostly run on Microsoft 365, so Copilot is often the first AI tool on the table. Copilot answers from whatever each user can already open. Microsoft documents this directly: Copilot only surfaces organisational data that the individual user has at least view permission to.
The Digital Transformation Agency's evaluation of the Australian Government Copilot trial reported that participants saw Copilot surface sensitive information that had never been stored or permissioned properly, which is why the audit comes before the licences.
Sites open to everyone, anonymous sharing links, broken inheritance and sites with no owner.
Where payroll, stock and pricing data, board papers and personal records sit, and whether labels cover them.
Restricted Content Discovery keeps risky sites out of Copilot answers while the clean-up finishes.
A group with clean access, measured tasks, and an agreed rule for when to buy more licences.
Leadership teams need reporting that compares like with like: this quarter against last, this summer's bookings against the one before. We build Power BI models that refresh from the source systems, with a written definition for each measure, so the board pack and the operations meeting use the same numbers.
A plain English question layer on top is then a small step, covered in our guide to plain English dashboards with an AI agent.
For Seymour Whyte, a Tier 1 infrastructure contractor in the VINCI group, we replaced emailed spreadsheets with standardised templates, SharePoint and Power BI for carbon reporting.
Read the Seymour Whyte carbon reporting case studyComparing this season with last, or one venue or office with another, needs the same measure definitions everywhere. We set those up once so the comparison holds.
Family groups and hospitality operators often run several Xero organisations. A product already consolidates them, so we point you to it before building anything custom.
ReportingMate for consolidated Xero reportingMany Tasmanian organisations already own Power Automate, and a lean team is better served by a flow it can maintain than an agent it cannot. This is the test we apply.
A good design often uses both: a flow moves structured data between systems and a model handles the step that needs reading or judgement. For the wider choice, see our comparisons of AI and RPA and of Zapier, Make and n8n. If an agent is the answer, our notes on running AI agents in production cover what it needs after go-live. The connecting work is system integration and process automation, and where no platform does the job we take it on as custom AI development.
Tasmania's hydro, mining and food processing sites run control systems that log far more than anyone reads, mostly locked in a historian.
We work on the IT side of the boundary, reading from historians and plant databases without writing back to control systems. Typical work includes reconciling historian figures with the ERP and cleaning up OT tag naming so data can be compared across sites. Choosing a platform? See PI System compared with Ignition.
Our principal consultant spent 18 years on projects for resources and energy companies including BHP, Rio Tinto and Senex Energy, gained while working with previous consulting employers. These companies are not Solve8 clients.
Everything outside Greater Hobart is handled the same way, with site days scoped in. See also manufacturing and processing.
Most Tasmanian businesses fall under the federal Privacy Act 1988. Tasmanian public sector bodies work under the Personal Information Protection Act 2004, and primary producers and processors carry licence, biosecurity and export record-keeping obligations on top. AI adds questions those rules did not anticipate: where a prompt is processed, whether a vendor trains on it, and who can explain an automated decision.
From 10 December 2026, amendments to the Privacy Act require privacy policies to describe substantially automated decisions that significantly affect individuals.
Privacy Act rules for automated decisionsThe systems we build log inputs, outputs and the person who approved each exception, so an auditor can trace a figure back to its source.
AI agent governance and human overrideOrganisations with existing ISO management systems can extend them to AI under ISO/IEC 42001 instead of writing a separate policy set.
ISO/IEC 42001 explainedEngagements are scoped and fixed per phase, so stopping after discovery is a legitimate outcome and you are never locked into a build you have not approved.
A free 30 minute call, then a written scope with a fixed fee for the first phase. Nothing starts until you approve it.
Interviews and data review, with time on site in Hobart, Launceston or at the operation itself where seeing the work matters.
Build against your real data, in your environment, an Australian region or on local hardware. One process is piloted first.
Documentation, training and admin access stay with you, so a small Tasmanian team can run it without calling us for every change.
After handover some organisations keep us on through managed AI services, which suits a team without a dedicated developer. Others with their own developers prefer team augmentation. Our AI consulting buyer's guide and how to choose an AI consultancy list the questions to ask any firm, including us.
We size the work to the team that has to live with it, and we say no to automation that will not pay for itself.
The consultant who scopes the job also builds it, with no account manager in between and no handover to a team you have not met.
Australian hosting by default and on-premise models where the data is too sensitive to leave your network.
We build and operate our own software, including Carbonly for emissions data and SupportAgent for on-premise incident investigation. Both are the founder's own products.
Australian business, working nationally
Australian regions or your own servers
Governance written into every scope
Registered Australian business
Our principal consultant brings 18 years of enterprise delivery experience from projects for BHP, Rio Tinto and Senex Energy, delivered with previous consulting employers. These companies are not Solve8 clients. You work directly with senior people, not a sales team handing you off to juniors.
Practical guides on the questions that come up most in Tasmanian scoping calls
What Tasmanian organisations ask before they commit to an AI project
Have a question about AI for your Tasmanian organisation that is not covered here?
Solve8 works with organisations in every state and territory. See all the places we work.
Book a free 30-minute consultation. We'll discuss your project, timeline, and budget. No pressure, just honest advice.
Or email us directly at hello@solve8.com.au