About
I’ve spent 25 years building the systems companies run on.
I’m Cesar Pereira, the founder of Cobalt and Ash. I’ve led this work as a director and built it as an engineer, and I still do both.
Background
The short version.
Most of my career has been the systems companies run on: eCommerce platforms, the connections into ERP, and the quoting and ordering tools sales teams live in. I’ve also built and run outbound campaigns that find new business.
Cobalt and Ash comes from what I kept seeing along the way. Companies of 10 to 150 people have the same problems as large ones: orders typed twice, quotes that take days, leads nobody follows up. AI now lets one experienced person build in weeks what used to take a team months. So I find the problem and fix it myself, on accounts you own.
The name
Why Cobalt and Ash.
Cobalt
Cobalt powers modern technology. It’s in the battery in your phone and your laptop, in many electric cars, and in the heat-resistant metal inside jet engines.
Ash
Ash is the wood tool handles have been made from for generations: strong, a little flexible and easy to grip. Think of a good hammer or axe.
We take powerful technology and make it something you can grip and use every day.
What I believe
Five things I believe about AI in business.
- 1
Start with the work, not the tool.
The useful question isn’t which AI to buy. It’s which repeated task costs you the most, and whether AI is even the right fix for it.
- 2
AI drafts. People decide.
A person approves what AI writes until the numbers prove it can be trusted.
- 3
Never let AI do the math.
Prices, totals, dates and stock levels come from your systems, worked out in code. AI reads and writes; it doesn’t guess at numbers.
- 4
The plain fix is often the right one.
Sometimes a $30 tool set up properly beats a custom build, and I’ll say so.
- 5
You should own it.
Everything runs on accounts your company owns and pays for directly, so it keeps working with or without me.
Working with me
How I work.
- Who does the work
- I do. I run the assessment, write the report and build the fixes myself.
- How many clients
- A short list, on purpose, so each one gets my full attention.
- Where
- Based in Wheaton, Illinois, working with companies across the US.
- What I don’t take on
- Work involving healthcare or financial-services data.