Balmer Works · AI systems for operations teams, built and run by a small shop

We work where your systems don’t.

Your ERP or CRM holds the data. It was never going to fit how your business actually runs, so your people invented the rest: the spreadsheet, the second screen, the thing everyone knows to check on Fridays. Balmer Works is the layer between you and your systems. It reads what comes in, checks it against what you already know, shows a person what needs judgment, and stays quiet about the rest.

Let’s talk See what is running

01 · What we are

Works, as in ironworks: a place where things get made.

Balmer Works is a small shop, by choice. Every system starts as one thing, built for one business, and put in front of the person who has to use it every day. It goes live when it earns its place, not when a roadmap says so. What gets learned on one bench goes into the next one.

Made to fit

Your records, your paperwork, your particular exceptions. A tool built for everyone fits nobody.

Built to be used

Not demoed. The test of a working tool is a month end where nobody had to think about it.

Yours to refuse

Anything it learns about how you work is offered to you, never switched on behind your back. Keep it, rename it, or turn it off.

02 · What we build

One running. More on the bench.

Every system here is the same six moves pointed at a different corner of the business. Read the work where it actually arrives. Compare it with what your records already say. Check it. Say what could not be checked. Show its work. Speak up only when a person is needed.

Live since July 2026 Reading layer · Orders

Order intake

It does the reading. You do the deciding.

At Peter Fasano, a home-furnishings textile house, orders arrive as email: typed, scanned, sometimes handwritten. The layer reads every one, checks and corrects it against the live catalog, and lays out exactly what needs a person, with every field traced to the paperwork it came from. It enters nothing into the ERP and decides nothing. It flags, never blocks: when something disagrees it says so instead of stopping the order. Live on real orders two days after the first commit. Running hourly and unattended since July 2026, at about five cents an order.

How it works

On the bench

The same layer pointed at the money, reading statements and invoices against the record, and at the stock, reading work in progress against open orders. In design, not yet built.

03 · How we build

Anyone can add AI to a business. The hard part is the part nobody budgets for.

Whether the people who have to live with it can see what it did, correct it, and stay in charge. That is not a model problem. It is a design problem, and it is most of the work.

Start where the work arrives

Not where the org chart says it should. An inbox, a scan, a form, a note somebody typed in a hurry.

Make one and hand it over early

A working thing on your real work in days, not a deck about a working thing in months.

Watch where it fails

Then fix the tool, never the person. If someone has to remember a workaround, the tool is wrong.

Say what it cannot do

Out loud, in the interface, every time. A tool that hides its limits is a tool nobody can trust twice.

Earn control, never take it

It reads first. Writing into your systems is a privilege that gets granted later, once it has been right for a while.

Hand it over as property

Your data stays yours and your habits stay yours. Nothing trains on your data, and nothing it learns about your people leaves the building.

04 · Why this shop

Most people building this come from engineering. I came from the other side.

I was trained to design objects. You make one, put it in someone’s hands, watch where it fails, and make the next one better. Nothing counts until a real person uses it without you standing there.

That is still the method, applied to software instead of objects, most recently at EY for Fortune 100 clients and at Amazon Ads. It is why these systems show their work, explain themselves, and leave the deciding to you. Trust is not a feature you add at the end. It is the shape of the thing.

05 · Who

Greg Balmer

Founder and Principal

A product design director whose work runs from HBO, the NBA, and American Express through Oracle and The Trade Desk to EY’s Fortune 100 clients and Amazon Ads. His first AI build, in 2023, was a real-time logistics planner that won EY’s internal AI competition, and since 2025 he has designed, built, and run production AI systems, most recently the order intake layer at Peter Fasano. Balmer Works is a Denver, Colorado company and continues the independent practice he founded in 2015.

Greg on LinkedIn

Tell me where your systems stop and your people start.

Somewhere in your business there is a spreadsheet beside the system, a second screen, and a person who checks. One conversation, no deck: describe how work reaches your team and I will tell you what a reading layer would catch, and whether it is worth building. If that sounds familiar, let’s talk.

Let’s talk greg@gregbalmer.design