Five tools open for a single question is already too many. A month's figure sits in the accounts, the stock in the ERP, the contact in the CRM, a server's load in monitoring, the audience in analytics. Ask is the chat we connected to those readings for our own operations, then opened as a demo.

Context: the figures are there, and so are the screens

An SME's leadership is not short of data. It is short of a place to ask for it in one sentence. Each domain has its screen, its export, its delay. The next reflex is to paste the table into a public chat and ask for a summary.

The SME dilemma

Opening five screens slows the decision. Exporting and pasting into a consumer chat sends the figures out of the building. A hand-copied spreadsheet is already wrong by the time you read it.

  • Five screens: ERP, CRM, accounts, monitoring, audience. The question waits while someone hunts for the right menu.
  • An export pasted into a public chat: the summary is fast, and the data leaves the company's perimeter.
  • A total rebuilt by hand: a page of documents is not the figure for a period. You add what you can see, and you get it wrong.

The concept: a reading gateway

Ask is a French-language chat, built by d-side solutions. You ask a question. The model, provided by Infomaniak AI, does not answer from memory: it calls read-only tools, cites the figure they return, and writes nothing back to the sources. Product site: ask.d-side.pro.

Technical positioning

This is not a model that "knows" the company. It is a gateway: the chat talks, the tools read. Access tokens for the sources stay in the process that holds the tools. The chat process does not have them. Opening the chat requires a sign-in.

Five sources, named by role

Ask does not name the software. It names the domain. Each source is read. None of them is changed.

  • ✓ERP: production data, order tracking, stock.
  • ✓CRM: contacts, companies, opportunities, exchange history.
  • ✓Accounts: net revenue for a period, expenses, chart of accounts.
  • ✓System monitoring: CPU, load, memory, disk, hosts, open alerts.
  • ✓Web analytics: visits, unique visitors, page views, most viewed pages.

A further source is declared alongside the others. Ask can therefore read an extra domain the company already has, still without writing.

Compatibility

Ask connects to the software already in place, for example Bexio, Zabbix and Matomo. If your tool has a read API, it can be added as a source.

How a question is answered

1) The question, in French

You write the way you would ask a colleague: an order, a stock level, a contact, an opportunity, a month's net revenue, a server's load, a site's visits. The chat answers in French, and briefly.

2) The tool, not memory

The model picks the tool that can read the domain in question. It may chain several reads. If it did not call a tool, it has no figure to cite.

3) The answer cites what was read

The amount, the stock or the visit count is what the tool returned. Revenue for a period comes from that period's calculation. It is not rebuilt by adding up a page of documents.

Illustrations: not live figures

ERP. "Where is the order, and does stock cover the quantity?"

CRM. "Where does this contact's opportunity stand?"

Accounts. "What was last month's net revenue?"

Monitoring. "What is the server's load right now?"

Audience. "How many people visited the site yesterday?"

At d-side

We use Ask every day to follow our monthly revenue, the load on our servers and the audience of d-side.pro.

Architecture

Ask is a FastAPI web application. The chat calls an MCP server on the same machine: that is where the reading tools live. The model is the Infomaniak AI API, chosen because it can call those tools. Source tokens do not leave the MCP process.

Hosting is in Switzerland. Nothing is written to the ERP, the CRM, the accounts, monitoring or analytics.

Your data

Questions and answers are processed by Infomaniak AI, hosted in Switzerland. Ask does not store them in a database: they stay in memory long enough to follow the latest exchanges, then disappear when the service restarts. Ask does not train a model on these exchanges. Access to your software stays on the Ask server and is never sent to the model.

Getting started

  1. A 30-minute conversation to list your sources and your questions.
  2. Connecting the sources as read-only, within a few days.
  3. A trial phase with your own questions before go-live.

Who it is for

Ask is for the leadership and operations of an SME that already has these five readings, and wants one question instead of five screens:

  • Leadership that wants a month's net revenue, the state of an order or the stage of an opportunity without opening each product.
  • Operations that watch hosts, load and alerts, and the site's audience, in the same chat.
  • A team that will not paste a client export into a chat whose perimeter it does not control.

In short

Ask is the French-language chat d-side solutions connected to the ERP, the CRM, the accounts, the servers and the audience. It reads. It does not write. It does not invent the figures.

The model is Infomaniak AI. Access to the sources stays with the tools. Hosting is in Switzerland.

The product is introduced at ask.d-side.pro. For a 30-minute demo, book a slot.

Book an Ask demo

LD

Luc Demierre

Founder & IT Consultant — d-side solutions Sàrl, Bulle

Specialized in IT architecture, systems security and AI integration for Swiss SMEs. Founder of d-side solutions Sàrl since 2022.

Frequently asked questions

Where is d-side solutions based?
d-side solutions is located at Chemin du Carry 7, 1630 Bulle, in the canton of Fribourg, Switzerland. Ask is built and operated by our team in Bulle.
Do you take on projects in Bulle and Fribourg?
Yes. We support SMEs in the canton of Fribourg, the Gruyère region, and Romandy, as well as mandates across Switzerland.
Can Ask change the ERP, the CRM or the accounts?
No. Ask only reads. The tools are read-only: a question gets an answer, and nothing is created, changed or deleted in the sources. The model cites the figure the tool returned and does not invent one.
Which sources does Ask query?
Five domains, named by role. The ERP: production data, order tracking, stock. The CRM: contacts, companies, opportunities, exchange history. The accounts: net revenue for a period, expenses, chart of accounts. System monitoring: CPU, load, memory, disk, hosts, open alerts. Web analytics: visits, unique visitors, page views, most viewed pages.
Does Ask work with my software?
Ask connects to the software you already use, for example Bexio, Zabbix and Matomo. If your tool has a read API, it can be added as a source. Ask only reads from it.
Where is my data processed?
Questions and answers are processed by Infomaniak AI, hosted in Switzerland. Ask does not store them in a database: they stay in memory long enough to follow the latest exchanges, then disappear when the service restarts. Ask does not train a model on these exchanges. Access to your software stays on the Ask server and is never sent to the model.
How do I request a demo?
Book a 30-minute slot on the demo page, or write to us. The demo shows the chat on questions from your own practice. The product is introduced at ask.d-side.pro, by d-side solutions, in Bulle (Fribourg).