Business process automation
Business process automation for Sussex & Surrey businesses
Most of what eats your team's week is not an AI problem. It is ordinary software that nobody ever got round to writing — and it is measurable, fixable and cheaper than you think.
You stop noticing twenty minutes. That is the whole difficulty with this kind of waste: no single instance is worth complaining about, so nobody complains, and it never appears on a list of problems to solve. It only shows up when somebody times it.
What business process automation actually means
The phrase covers a lot of ground, so here is the plain version. Business process automation is getting software to do the repeatable parts of a job that a person is currently doing by hand — moving data between systems, producing the same report every week, filing and finding documents, chasing the things that have gone quiet. Workflow automation is the same idea described from the other end: instead of automating one task, you automate the sequence of steps a piece of work travels through.
You do not need to care which word your supplier uses. What matters is whether anybody has measured the hours before quoting you for the software, and whether you own what gets built.
The six shapes of wasted time
Across every business we look at, lost hours take one of six shapes. We use the same six in the audit, in the report and here, so that what we find can be compared rather than merely described.
1. Automating data entry between two systems
You would probably call it: Typing it in twice
The same information keyed into two places. Order emails re-typed into the stock system, delivery notes typed into accounts, a spreadsheet quietly shadowing the main system because the main system does not quite do it.
What we would build: A bridge between the two systems, or an intake that reads the incoming document and fills the fields — with a person confirming before anything commits.
When we would tell you not to bother: When it is a handful a week, or when one of the two systems is about to be replaced anyway. Automating a bridge to something you are retiring is money set on fire.
2. Automated reporting instead of the weekly export
You would probably call it: Building the same report every week
Somebody exports, pastes, formats and sends. Same day, same hands, every week — and the hours never appear anywhere because it is nobody's job title.
What we would build: The report assembles itself on a schedule from the same sources, and lands where it is already read.
When we would tell you not to bother: When nobody actually reads it. Stop sending it and see who asks — that is free, and it is the right first move surprisingly often.
3. Document search across your shared drives
You would probably call it: Looking for something you already own
The quote from two years ago, the drawing, the certificate, the email where the customer agreed the change. It exists. Finding it is the job.
What we would build: Proper indexing and search across the shares you already have. Sometimes that is a tidy-up and a decent search tool; sometimes it is Cortex, which was built for exactly this shape.
When we would tell you not to bother: When the real problem is that the document was never saved in the first place. No search finds a file that does not exist — fix the filing, then search it.
4. Capturing the knowledge in one person’s head
You would probably call it: Asking the one person who knows
Every few hours somebody's work stops so somebody else's can continue. The cost lands twice: the asker waits, and the expert loses the thread of whatever they were doing.
What we would build: Capture the answers where they are asked, so the second person to ask does not need to ask. This is the shape that quietly decides whether know-how survives a retirement.
When we would tell you not to bother: When the question is a genuine judgement call. Some answers should cost an interruption, and pretending otherwise produces confident wrong answers.
5. Automated chasing and follow-up
You would probably call it: Chasing
Quotes that went quiet. Paperwork that was never signed. Invoices past terms. Suppliers who said they would confirm. Nobody owns chasing, so it happens when somebody remembers.
What we would build: Something that watches the state of things and raises the ones that have gone quiet, with the context already attached so the follow-up takes a minute rather than ten.
When we would tell you not to bother: When you would rather chase personally because the relationship is the point. Some customers should get a phone call from a human, and a reminder is not an improvement.
6. Turning undocumented rules into software
You would probably call it: The rules that live in somebody's head
How this customer is priced. Which jobs skip that step. What the exception is when the material is out of stock. It works, right up until the person holding it is on holiday.
What we would build: Write it down first. Once the rules are written and agreed, they can be built — and the writing down is usually where most of the value turns up.
When we would tell you not to bother: When the rules genuinely change per job. We will refuse to automate an undocumented rule, because that copies a decision nobody can check afterwards.
Cost it yourself, before you talk to anyone
minutes × times per week × 4.33 ÷ 60 = hours per month
Multiply by the number of people doing it, then by what that hour actually costs you. Twenty minutes a day, one person, is roughly seven hours a month. Four people doing it is most of a working week, every month, forever.
If you would rather have it worked out for you, the two-minute calculator does the arithmetic for the searching shape.
Custom development
When the fix does not exist off the shelf, we build it. In practice that means:
- Line-of-business systems — stock, jobs, quoting, scheduling, compliance paperwork; the thing your business actually runs on.
- Integrations — making two systems that were never designed to talk to each other exchange the one thing they need to.
- Document and data pipelines — getting information out of PDFs, emails, spreadsheets and scans, and into somewhere it can be used.
- Internal tools — a dashboard, an intake form, a checker; small software built around one workflow rather than bought and bent to fit.
- Web systems — customer-facing portals and ordering built on the same principles: fixed price, source code handed over, hosted wherever you want it.
The systems we are most often asked to connect
Integration work is bespoke and quoted from the audit, but the same names come up most weeks: Microsoft 365, Outlook and Exchange, SharePoint and Teams, Windows file shares, Sage, Xero and QuickBooks, SQL Server and older Access databases, CRM systems, e-commerce and EPOS platforms, and the spreadsheets that quietly hold a business together alongside all of them. Getting information out of PDFs, scans and email attachments and into one of those is the single most common request we get.
If a system you depend on is not on that list, it does not mean we cannot connect it. It means we will look at it during the audit and tell you honestly what it will take.
Everything is fixed-price and quoted from the audit, so the scope is measured rather than estimated. You own the result outright, source included, documented so that another engineer could pick it up. That last part matters more when your supplier is a small firm, not less.
The house rule
If simple automation beats AI, we say so in writing. It is in the audit report, it is in the booklet we leave behind, and it is on this page. We would rather sell you the cheaper thing that works than the more impressive thing that does not.
Where to start
With a measurement, not a proposal. The Operations Audit puts a number on each of the six shapes in your business, ranks what is worth fixing, and says plainly what is not. You keep the report whoever you hire.
Book a free 15-minute call Or send a message
Questions people actually ask
Is this AI, or ordinary software?
Mostly ordinary software. Most of what wastes a week is a plumbing problem, not an intelligence problem, and we will say so in writing when that is the case. AI earns its place in a few of these shapes — reading unstructured documents, answering questions across years of files — and not in the others.
We do not want AI at all. Are we the wrong customer?
No. Plenty of our work has no AI in it whatsoever. The ladder works the same way: measure first, build what the measurement justifies, own what you paid for.
Do you do custom development, or only off-the-shelf products?
Both. Cortex is a product; builds are bespoke. Typical work is line-of-business systems, integrations between things that do not talk to each other, document and data pipelines, and internal tools built around one specific workflow.
Do we own what you build?
Yes, outright, source code included and documented for handover. That is deliberate: it is what makes it safe to buy from a small supplier.
How do you price it?
Fixed price, quoted from the audit so the scope is measured rather than estimated. See pricing.
Do you work outside Horsham?
Yes — across Sussex, Surrey and the South East. See the areas we serve.