Rung two of the ladder
The Operations Audit
A fixed-price, measured look at where your working hours actually go — and a written report you keep, whoever you hire next.
Why it is not free. Every IT company in Sussex will survey your business for nothing. A free audit is a sales call with a clipboard: it arrives already knowing what it wants to sell you. Charging for ours is what buys the independence to write buy nothing at the end — and we do.
What actually happens
We do not ask what you think the problem is. We come and measure it.
- We follow the work, not the org chart. A job is traced from the moment it arrives to the moment it is invoiced, through whoever touches it.
- Everything is timed or read off a system. A stopwatch for the tasks people do, an export or a log where one exists. Nothing is written up from memory afterwards.
- Every finding is graded by how it was measured. High means a log, an export, or two timings on separate days. Medium means one timing, or two independent accounts. Low means anything weaker — and every Low is printed as a stated limit.
- Each piece of lost time is sorted into one of six shapes. The same six shapes we use in every report, so findings can be compared rather than described. See the six shapes of wasted time →
- Nothing leaves site unfinished. There is a completeness check before we drive away: a missing measurement, grade or rate blocks the visit from being closed.
What you get
A written report, in plain English, structured the same way every time:
- An executive summary you could hand to a co-director
- The method, and what each confidence grade means
- Where the time goes — hours per month, by role, at your real loaded rates
- An information map: what your business knows, and where it is kept
- Options ranked by expected value, with a separate recommended sequence
- What we are not recommending, and why
- The business language we captured — your terms, defined as you use them
- Limits: what we could not establish, stated rather than glossed
- What happens next, with fixed prices before any work is agreed
The arithmetic is yours to check
There is no black box. Every hours figure in the report is built the same way:
minutes × times per week × 4.33 × people ÷ 60 = hours per month
Costed at the loaded rate for the role doing the work, not a blended company average — because it matters whether an hour is lost by an estimator or by an apprentice.
Recoverable time is then discounted against what automation realistically achieves for that kind of work, and the discount is stated. We would rather show you a smaller honest number than a larger one you stop believing the first month it does not appear.
What it costs
Operations Audit
£895
One visit, one written report, yours to keep. No obligation to buy anything afterwards.
The 15-minute call before it is free, and it is a real gate rather than a formality — if an audit is not going to pay for itself in your business, we will say so on that call and not book one. See how everything else is priced →
New to this? The AI consultancy overview explains how the whole engagement runs, start to finish.
What we will not do
Automate a rule nobody has written down
If your pricing logic lives in one person's head and has never been documented, automating it copies a rule nobody can check. We will recommend writing it down first — and that recommendation is free.
Recommend replacing something that works
A healthy core system is an asset. Plenty of audits end with "keep it, and connect these two things to it" rather than a migration nobody asked for.
Recommend Cortex when something simpler wins
Most of what wastes a week is not an AI problem — it is ordinary software that nobody got round to writing. When simple automation beats AI, the report says so in writing, and the cheaper option is ranked above ours.
After the report
You own it. If you want us to build what it recommends, we quote fixed prices from it — designed, built, tested and handed over, code included. If you would rather take it to somebody else, take it. It was written to survive that.
Book a free 15-minute call Or send a message
Questions people actually ask
Why do you charge when everyone else surveys for free?
Because a free audit is a sales call with a clipboard. If the survey is free, it is paid for by what it recommends — and it will always recommend something. Charging for ours is what buys the independence to finish the report with buy nothing, and we do exactly that when it is the right answer.
What if the honest answer is that we don't need you?
Then the report says so, and you have still bought something worth having: a measured picture of where your hours go, in writing, that you own. Every report contains a section headed what we are not recommending, and it is never empty.
Do you need access to our systems?
Not to do the audit. We work from what we can watch and what you can export. If a system log gives a firmer number than a stopwatch, we will ask for the export — but nothing is connected, installed or changed during an audit.
Will it disrupt the team?
We follow the work rather than interrupt it. People are timed doing the job they were going to do anyway, and anything gathered from staff is gathered as method, not surveillance — we are measuring the process, not the person.
Do we have to use you for the work afterwards?
No. The report is yours, whoever you hire. It is written to be handed to another supplier if you would rather — which is the point of writing down the method and the limits.
How do we know the numbers aren't inflated?
Every figure carries how it was measured. High confidence means a log, an export, or two timings on separate days. Medium means one timing or two independent accounts. Low means anything weaker — and every Low is printed in the report as a stated limit rather than quietly averaged in. The arithmetic is printed too, so you can check it.