Services
Automation audits
Most businesses know they are losing hours to manual work. Far fewer can say which process costs the most, or which one to fix first.
An automation audit is a short, structured piece of work that answers three questions: where does the manual effort actually go, what is it worth to remove, and what should be done first. It produces a ranked list with effort and return attached, so the decision is made on evidence rather than enthusiasm.
We run the audit before quoting a build, because pricing a project before understanding the process either overcharges the client or sets the build up to fail. The output belongs to you — if you take the roadmap and build it with someone else, that is a fair outcome.
What we will not do: pad the list. If a process is cheaper to leave alone than to automate, it goes in the report as leave alone, with the reasoning. A roadmap that recommends everything is not prioritisation, it is a sales document. The value of the audit is in what it excludes as much as what it includes.
Who should be in the sessions: the people who actually do the work, not only the managers who designed the process on paper. The gap between the two is usually where the hours are hiding. Plan for roughly an hour per person involved. If the people doing the work are not available for that hour, the audit will describe the intended process rather than the real one, and the roadmap will be worth less than you paid for it.
Signs this is worth fixing
- Everyone agrees there is waste, nobody agrees where
- Automation ideas are chosen because someone is enthusiastic about them
- Previous projects delivered a tool nobody used
- No one can put a number on the hours lost per month
- The team is too busy to document its own processes
What we automate
Process discovery
Interviews and observation with the people doing the work, producing a map of the real process including the workarounds.
Time and effort measurement
How often each step runs, how long it takes, who does it and what it blocks. Rough numbers that are honest beat precise numbers that are invented.
Cost model
Hours converted into rand using your actual cost of labour, with error and rework costs counted separately.
Prioritisation
Each candidate scored on value, effort, risk and dependency, so quick wins come first and foundation work is not skipped.
Roadmap
A phased plan: what to do in the first month, what follows, and what to leave alone because it is not worth automating.
How it works
- 01
Free first session
A focused conversation about where the manual work sits, and a first view of whether an audit is worth doing.
- 02
Audit week
We interview the relevant people, observe the work, and gather the numbers. Usually about a week for a mid-sized business.
- 03
Findings and costing
We model the hours and cost per candidate and sanity-check the assumptions with you before finalising.
- 04
Roadmap handover
You get the ranked roadmap, the cost model and the recommendation, explained in a session rather than emailed as a document.
What you get
- Process maps for the areas reviewed
- A ranked list of automation candidates
- A cost model in hours and rand
- A phased roadmap with dependencies
- A shortlist of what not to automate
- The findings, yours to keep and act on
Systems we work with
No special tooling is required. We work with whatever you already use to document processes, and where none exists we produce the maps and models in a format your team can maintain.
Questions people ask
What does the audit cost?
The first session is free. A full audit is quoted after that session once we understand the size of the business and how many processes are in scope. It is a fixed fee agreed before we start.
How long does it take?
About a week of elapsed time for a mid-sized business, depending on how many people we need to speak to and how available they are.
Do we have to build with you afterwards?
No. The roadmap is yours. We would like the build, but an audit that only has value if you buy the next thing is not an audit.
What if you find nothing worth automating?
Then we say so. It is a real outcome, and cheaper for you than a project that should not have happened.