Service 04
Business process automation
Almost every growing company employs people who retype data from one screen into another. That work is dull, error-prone and does not scale. I find out where it happens and automate it away, usually without adding any new software.
Where the time goes
Manual re-typing creeps in. A new system arrives that does not talk to the old one, and someone solves that temporarily by copying and pasting. Two years later that temporary fix is a fixed part of somebody every week and nobody knows quite how much time it costs.
The total is almost always higher than expected. Five minutes per order sounds harmless until you multiply it by the number of orders. And the real cost is not in the hours but in the errors: one mistyped address costs a return, one missed order costs a customer.
What the service covers
First find out where it hurts, then build. In that order, because most automation wishes people volunteer are not the expensive bottlenecks.
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Process analysis
Sitting with the people doing the work and adding up how much time each manual step costs. That produces a list of bottlenecks ranked by hours saved per month.
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Workflows in whichever tool fits
The tool follows the case, not the other way round. Often it lands on n8n or Make because both are visual enough that someone without a programming background can see what is happening, but if you already run something that works, I build on that.
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Connecting what you already have
New software is rarely needed. Your accounting, your webshop, your CRM and your mail platform almost all have an API. The work is in tying them together, not in buying anything.
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Error handling and monitoring
A workflow that stops silently is worse than no workflow. Everything I build raises an alert when something breaks, with enough detail to see what.
How it runs
- 01
One week of analysis
Watching over the shoulder of the people doing the work. It ends with a list of bottlenecks and an estimate of the time saved per item.
- 02
Two to six weeks of building
We start with the bottleneck that saves the most time and work down. Each workflow goes live as soon as it works, not once everything is finished.
- 03
Handover
Documentation plus a session where someone on your side learns how the workflows fit together and how to adjust them when something changes.
What you end up with
Less manual work, fewer errors, and processes that keep working when the volume doubles.
- Usually between ten and forty hours saved per month
- Fewer typing errors, and so less rework and fewer returns
- Processes that scale without adding headcount
- Visibility into what goes wrong, because every workflow logs itself
What it costs
What an engagement costs depends on its scope and on how many systems are involved. I work with a fixed price per phase rather than open-ended billing: you know what a phase costs before it starts, and you decide after each one whether to continue.
I only quote a figure once I know what we are talking about. That takes a half-hour conversation, at no charge.
Whether this fits
This works well when
- data is structurally retyped between systems
- your systems have an API, which nearly all modern software does
- volume is growing but the team cannot grow with it
- someone wants to own the workflows afterwards
This fits less well when
- the processes change every month: automate what is stable first
- the core systems are closed and allow no integration at all
- the real problem is that the process itself is wrong
Questions about automation
Why n8n and not Zapier?
Mainly cost at volume, and because you can run n8n on your own server, which matters when sensitive data passes through the workflows. Zapier is easier to start with but gets expensive quickly once you run thousands of actions a month. If you already run Zapier and it works, switching is rarely worth it.
What happens when a supplier changes their API?
The workflow falls over and you get an alert. That happens a few times a year across an average set of integrations. The repair is usually an hour of work, and it is exactly why the handover matters: you do not want to have to call someone for that.
Do people lose their jobs over this?
In practice I rarely see it. What disappears is the retyping, and that is usually the part of the job people were least happy with. It is fair to say, though, that if a role consists mostly of retyping, that role changes materially. That conversation is better had beforehand than afterwards.
Let's discuss how I can help your business grow
A short call is enough to tell whether there is a good fit. No sales pitch, just an honest read on what is possible.