Business, digital and AI transformation for owners, CFOs, operating leaders and family offices. We work alongside your team and the advisers you already have, and we're still in the room at go-live.
The problem
Month-end takes ten days and nobody's confident in the number. The same invoice gets keyed into three systems. There's a spreadsheet holding the business together that one person understands. A new system nobody uses, and an old one nobody can switch off. The process on paper isn't the process in the room.
None of that is a technology problem. The business gets reviewed, the recommendations get written, the deck gets presented, and then the engagement ends. Six months later the new system is half used, the old spreadsheets are back, and nobody owns the gap between the plan and the way people actually work.
Our measure of success is simple. Not what we hand over on the last day, but what's still running a year later, without us. Advice is easy to give. We stay and operate the change until it holds.
What we can help with
A single fix, a whole function rebuilt, or something we design from scratch. Find the thing that sounds like your week.
A clean ledger, numbers you trust, and a month-end that closes without heroics.
Your time back, real visibility, and a business that runs on systems instead of memory.
Fewer handoffs, tools that talk to each other, and work that flows without chasing.
A clean ledger, a month-end that closes on time, and numbers everyone agrees on.
Tools that talk to each other, and work that flows without chasing.
AI in the day job, adopted with your team rather than around them.
When nothing off the shelf fits, we design and build it.
A single view across the family's entities and investments, clear decision rights, and an office that doesn't run on one person's memory.
We don't do tax, audit or compliance. We work alongside your accountant and existing advisers.
How we work
Every engagement runs the same spine, whether it's a targeted fix, a finance function overhaul, a new tech stack, an AI implementation or a custom application. The scale changes. The discipline doesn't. Watch it take shape, stage by stage, from empty block to a building with the lights on.
We sit with you and your team, listen to the pain points and watch how the work is actually done today. Not how the manual says it's done. What comes out is a clear picture of the current state and a shortlist of what's worth fixing first.
Current processes mapped and visualised so everyone can see the same picture. Then we design the future state and choose the tools. We pick the right tool for you. We're app-agnostic, so the recommendation is the recommendation.
Systems implemented, integrated and connected. Off the shelf where it fits, custom built where it doesn't. Data comes across cleanly and the pieces talk to each other, so nobody is re-keying between tools.
Tested with the people who will use it, not in a lab. We run real work through the new system, find where it fights the way your team operates, and refine until it fits. This is where adoption is won or lost.
Cutover, training at the desk, and documentation your team will actually use. We're in the room when it goes live, not on the end of a support ticket. The old way is switched off deliberately, not left running in parallel forever.
We stay close until it's steady, then step back deliberately. Some clients keep us on as stewards of the system as their business grows. Either way, you'll be able to name the date we stopped touching it, and the system will still be running. That's the point.
The thread through every stage: your people. Change management and team engagement run under the whole line. The goal is adoption, not installation. Your team is involved from the first conversation, so what we build together is understood, supported and actually used.
AI, done properly
Most businesses we meet are already using AI, just not on purpose. Four people on ChatGPT with no policy. A clever automation one person built that nobody else understands. A pilot that impressed everyone and never made it into the day job.
That's not an AI problem. It's the same problem as every other stalled transformation: something got installed, and nothing got adopted. So an AI implementation runs the same six stages as everything else we do. The only thing that changes is what gets built.
Where you actually are: data, systems, skills, governance and appetite. Scored, not guessed.
Where AI earns its place, ranked by value and effort. And where it doesn't, we say so.
Vendor neutral and app-agnostic. The recommendation is the recommendation.
Assistants, agents and automations built around your real process.
What's allowed, where data goes, who owns which agent, and how you'd know if something went wrong.
Taught at the desk, in your context, with the work in front of them.
You leave holding the plan: a written AI action plan covering what's worth doing, in what order, what it should cost and what it should save. It's yours to keep, whoever does the building.
Built by WVA
The tools that run our own practice are the same kind we build for clients. You're not buying a promise, you're seeing the product.
Our guided discovery tool. It structures the first conversations, captures how your business runs today, and turns them into a clear, written picture of where the friction is and what's worth doing.
Start with the Discovery Assistant →A guided diagnostic that takes a family office through a structured conversation and returns a written maturity assessment: where things stand, and what to strengthen next.
Clients on engagement get their own WVA portal: their apps, progress and support in one place.
Log in to the Client Portal →The numbers that matter, fed straight from Xero. KPIs, month-end reporting and forecasts, shaped to the way you actually run the business.
About West Village Advisory
West Village Advisory was founded by Karl Schoenmaekers, who brings over 17 years across business advisory, accounting and digital transformation, including more than a decade with a Big 4 firm in Melbourne and New York.
Karl's foundations are in accounting, but the work quickly grew into cloud business applications as platforms like Xero emerged. As an early adopter of Xero in Australia, he worked with businesses and their accountants to implement, convert and get real value from cloud systems. That work has since expanded across business applications, reporting, automation and, more recently, AI.
What underpins all of it is people. However well designed a system is, success depends on whether the people using it feel heard, supported and confident in what's being introduced. So we take the time to understand how a business really operates, and who it operates through, before we change anything.
We're intentionally app-agnostic, with deep experience across the Xero ecosystem, reporting tools like Spotlight Reporting, Fathom and Power BI, and AI platforms like Claude. Our role is to align you with the right tools for your business, not to push a particular product. And when nothing off the shelf fits, we build our own. WVA is based in Torquay, working across the Surf Coast, Geelong and Melbourne, and wherever the work takes us.
Karl Schoenmaekers Founder & Director, West Village Advisory
Get in touch
One pain point, a question about your systems, or a bigger change you've been thinking about. Tell us a little and we'll come back with an honest view of how we can help. And if we work together, you'll have a fixed price in front of you before you commit to anything.
Prefer email? karl@westvillageadvisory.com.au