Your tools talk.
Your data doesn't.
Pallas Advisory designs and builds AI automation and the operational systems underneath it for small and growing businesses. Strategy through implementation, one team from diagnosis to handoff.
You've got the tools. You might even have integrations. But the data doesn't match, the processes are still manual where it counts, and the attribution is a guess. We design, build, and hand off the systems that make your operations actually work, so you stop spending time on things a system should handle.
Small practice, not an agency. No handoff to a junior team halfway through your project. The team that scopes your project is the team that builds it.
Knowing what to build is the hard part.
Anyone can automate a workflow now. The tools are everywhere. The hard part is connecting the right strategy to the right system — figuring out which process is actually broken, what the architecture needs to look like, and where automation creates value versus where it creates a new mess.
We do the diagnosis, design the system, and build it. Most consultants stop after step one.
Every engagement follows the same discipline: discover the operational friction, design the system architecture, build and deploy the solution, and hand it off so it works independently. Some clients take full ownership. Others want us to keep it evolving. Either way, the system isn't held hostage — it runs without depending on us.
The work spans custom data infrastructure, workflow automation, AI integration, and API development. The specifics depend on what's broken. The approach doesn't change.
Find the problem that sounds like yours.
Marketing teams that can't prove what's working
Your marketing spend is significant but your attribution is a spreadsheet and a prayer. You've got HubSpot, Google Ads, maybe Salesforce — they technically talk to each other, but the integrations are outdated, half-maintained, or speaking different languages. The data moves, but it doesn't match. When leadership asks for ROAS, the answer depends on which dashboard you look at.
We build custom marketing attribution systems — the data infrastructure underneath your marketing stack. The layer that normalizes what your tools are saying so the numbers actually mean something. Schema design, ETL pipelines, API integrations, GDPR-compliant architecture, and reporting that connects ad spend to actual revenue. Not another dashboard on top of broken data — the system that makes your existing dashboards trustworthy.
Built a full marketing attribution system for a global multi-brand B2C company — connecting ad spend across Google, Meta, and Bing to actual revenue for the first time. PostgreSQL schema, multi-channel ETL pipeline, campaign spend integration, GDPR-compliant architecture with row-level security. Handed off to the in-house analytics team, who run it independently.
Read the case studyGrowing businesses that need strategy and systems, not just one or the other
You've got strategic questions without grounded answers. Who are your real customers? Where's the operational friction? Why isn't the pipeline converting? You've maybe hired a strategy consultant before and gotten a deck that sat in a drawer. Or you've hired a developer who built exactly what you asked for — which turned out to be the wrong thing.
We do both. CRM audits to validate your assumptions. Process mapping to surface where the real friction lives. And then we build the systems that fix it — workflow automation, integrations, operational infrastructure. You leave with decisions made and things built, not a deck to hand off to someone else.
Worked with multiple growth-stage companies to turn strategic questions into operational answers — validating customer profiles through CRM analysis, mapping friction points across sales and onboarding processes, and building the automation systems to fix them. Returning clients who come back because the first engagement delivered real change.
Entrepreneurs building in the Netherlands
You're building a business in a new country. You're good at what you do — but you're doing it while navigating a foreign system, mostly alone, with a stack of tools that weren't designed for your situation. You don't need someone to explain the Netherlands to you. You need someone who's already here, already building, and can help you set up the operational infrastructure your business needs to grow.
Pallas Advisory is founded by an American on a DAFT visa in Utrecht. We know what it's like to build from scratch in a country where the business ecosystem works differently than what you're used to. Same timezone, both US and Dutch business contexts understood, and the same systems we build for any growing business — automation, workflows, AI integration — just with the local context built in.
Built a client onboarding automation for a high-touch coaching business. The founder was spending 1-2 hours per client manually assembling personalized plans — time that came directly out of actual coaching. Now the operational assembly happens in under 2 minutes, and coaches start every client relationship with a personalized plan already in hand — ready to refine, not build from scratch. More time for white-glove service, less time on operational busywork. Full CRM integration, AI-powered content generation, and a system designed to run without ongoing technical support.
Who you're working with.
I'm Melissa Kolbe. I founded Pallas Advisory to solve a problem I kept seeing: strategy consultants who can't build, and developers who build the wrong thing. Pallas Advisory does both — discovery, architecture, implementation, and handoff — within a single engagement.
Before this, I spent years in marketing operations and enterprise tech — the kind of roles where you're the person who figures out why the CRM isn't syncing, why the attribution numbers don't match, and why the automation that was supposed to save time is creating more work than it eliminates.
That's still what we do. The difference is we also build the fix, not just diagnose the problem. EU-based, US-fluent, GDPR-compliant by default, and a small number of clients at a time.
Pallas Advisory is not affiliated with Pallas Advisors (a defense and national security firm in Washington, DC), Pallas Capital Advisors (a US wealth management firm), Pallas Partners (a litigation firm), or NRG PALLAS (a Dutch nuclear energy organization).
Current Focus Areas
How It Works
Simple, transparent, and no-pressure.
Discovery
We map your current operations — what tools you use, where the manual work is, what breaks, what you wish worked differently. We also challenge the tool stack itself. What used to require a six-month enterprise build can now be done faster with smarter architecture.
Architecture
We design the system — data models, workflow logic, integrations, and handoff plan. You see exactly what gets built before any building starts.
Build & Deploy
We build and deploy the solution in your environment. Milestone-based delivery so you see progress, not just a final reveal.
Handoff & Beyond
Documentation, walkthroughs, and training. The system works independently — you're never locked in. Some clients take full ownership. Others keep us on a lightweight retainer. Both paths are designed in from the start.
Agentic Operations Audit
Most businesses can't identify their own highest-value automation opportunities — not because they're uninformed, but because they're too close to it. When you've been doing something manually for three years, it stops registering as a problem.
We map your workflows, extract the decision logic buried in your manual processes, and identify the 3–5 highest-ROI opportunities for AI agent automation. You walk away with a prioritized roadmap — concrete implementation plans and expected outcomes, not a strategy deck. Available as the first phase of a full engagement or as a standalone deliverable.
A client's team was spending hours per customer on what felt like irreducibly complex work — assembling deliverables that required cross-referencing multiple variables. Discovery revealed structured decision logic underneath the complexity: Almost 200 discrete tasks driven by multiple variables. The operational assembly now takes minutes. The team spends their time on the work that actually requires human judgment.
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