Service
Workflow automation audit for small business operations
Most teams can name the process that hurts. Far fewer can say which of the candidates on the list repays a build first, in what order, and what it would take to get there. This engagement answers that one question and then stops.
Scope
A bounded diagnostic, not a strategy exercise
It has a fixed shape: the processes you run today, observed, mapped, scored, and handed back in priority order. Two adjacent things on this site are deliberately not the same purchase.
Not the company roadmap
AI strategy consulting asks where AI belongs across the business over the next year or two. This asks a smaller question about work you already do, and answers it faster.
Not the free guide
Our guide to choosing which process to automate first hands you the method to run yourself. This is the paid version, run by someone with no stake in the answer.
Not a pitch for a build
The backlog names what we recommend leaving alone, and why. Plenty of processes are too rare, too variable, or too close to a system due for replacement to be worth touching.
Which route
Three ways to arrive at a first project
There is a self-serve route, a paid diagnostic, and a company-level engagement. They differ in scope and in who does the looking, and the cheapest one that answers your question is the right one.
| Route | Who does the assessment | What comes out of it | Time it takes | Fits when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-serve guide | Your own team, using our published scoring axes | An internal short list you scored yourselves | Your own time, unscheduled | The list is short and the team already agrees on it |
| Workflow automation audit | Us, observing the work as it actually runs | A ranked, effort-scored backlog with feasibility checked | Two to three weeks for one department | The list is long, contested, or nobody can defend the order |
| Strategy engagement | Us, at the level of the business rather than the process | A company-level view of where AI belongs and where it does not | Longer, scoped to the business | The question is about the whole company, not a set of processes |
What happens in the first week
Almost all of it is listening. We interview the people who run the processes under review, sit with them while they work, and collect the artefacts that never make it into a procedure document — the shared inbox, the spreadsheet that reconciles two systems by hand, the file everyone keeps a private copy of. What a process is supposed to do and what it actually does diverge more often than not, and the gap is usually where the opportunity is hiding.
We also count. Volumes and cycle times get measured rather than recalled, because the process people complain about loudest is rarely the one consuming the most hours. A tedious monthly task generates far more grumbling than a two-minute step repeated ninety times a week, and only one of those is worth a build.
What happens in the second week
Scoring and technical feasibility. Every candidate is put against the same four axes — frequency, variability, system access, and the consequence of getting a step wrong — so the resulting order can be argued on the merits rather than on enthusiasm. Then we check whether the systems involved can actually be integrated: which have documented APIs, which are locked behind a vendor, which are already scheduled for replacement. A candidate that scores well commercially but sits on a closed system is a different project, and it is much cheaper to learn that now than mid-build.
Existing automation counts as a system too. Where a team has outgrown a library of one-step Zaps, untangling that is scoped as its own piece of work rather than folded silently into a workflow automation build.
Multi-location businesses get one extra question in the scoring: whether a candidate has to work identically in every location and roll up into one number afterwards, because that changes both the effort and the owner. Our AI automation for franchise businesses page covers how those rollouts are scoped.
What you receive at the end
A short written document and a working session to walk through it. Each candidate carries its score, an effort estimate, the systems it touches, the risks it introduces, and its place in the order. There is an explicit list of what we recommend not automating. It is written to be portable — detailed enough for an in-house developer or a different vendor to act on — because a diagnostic that only its author can use is not a diagnostic. If you do decide to build, the stage-by-stage engagement model explains how the quote follows the scope.
On process mining tools: where a business already runs work through a platform that logs every step, event data can shorten the mapping considerably — Microsoft documents the approach in its process mining overview. Most small businesses do not have that data, which is why this audit starts with observation rather than with a log export.
Questions
What owners ask before booking one
How is this different from your AI consulting engagement?
Scope. The consulting engagement asks a company-level question: where AI belongs in this business over the next year or two, and where it does not. This is narrower and more concrete. It looks only at processes you run today, and it ends in a ranked backlog rather than a strategy.
Why pay for this when you publish the method for free?
Because scoring your own processes is harder than it looks. The guide gives you the axes; the hard part is seeing the work honestly when you are inside it, getting volumes that are measured rather than remembered, and checking whether the systems involved can actually be integrated.
How much of our team's time does it take?
Roughly an hour each with the people who run the processes under review, plus some observation time while they work normally. We would rather watch a real week than run a workshop. Nobody needs to prepare documentation for us, and we do not ask for a process map you do not already have.
What if we already know which process we want automated?
Then say so on the consultation call and we will tell you whether an audit is worth buying. If one process is genuinely settled, scoping the build directly is cheaper and faster. The audit earns its keep when the list is long, contested, or nobody can defend the order.
Free consultation
Tell us what is costing you the most time
Describe the process. You get a straight read on whether it is worth automating, roughly what it would take, and what we would tackle first — on a call that costs nothing.
- Under an hour, free, and no obligation
- Fixed price per stage, agreed before any work starts
- You own everything we build, documented and in your accounts
- If you do not need us, we will say so on that call
The form is the fastest way to reach us — we reply from a real person, usually within one business day.