What Actually Happens in a Workflow Automation Audit
Most firms that need workflow automation never book a call about it. Not because they are not interested, but because they have no idea what they are agreeing to. The phrase free audit has been worn thin by people who meant free sales pitch, and a managing partner with ninety minutes of margin in their week is not going to gamble it on finding out.
So here is exactly what happens in ours. All twenty minutes of it.
What it is not
There is no slide deck. Nobody presents our credentials at you. We do not ask what your budget is, and we do not need you to have decided anything before the call.
We also do not ask for a phone number to book it, which is deliberate. If the conversation is useful you will want the next one, and if it is not you should be able to walk away without being chased.
Before the call: about five minutes of your time
When you book, you get one question back: which process currently costs your team the most time? You do not need to measure it. A rough answer is enough, and if your answer is that you genuinely do not know, that is a useful answer too. It is the most common one.
If you have a number, bring it. If you have a process map, we will read it. If you have neither, come anyway.
The twenty minutes
The call splits roughly into four parts.
Five minutes: what the process actually does. Not what it is supposed to do. We walk through the real sequence, including the step where someone copies something into a spreadsheet because the two systems do not talk.
Five minutes: where the time goes. Who touches it, how often, and what happens when it goes wrong. Rework is usually the hidden cost, and it rarely appears on anyone's estimate.
Five minutes: what is realistically automatable. Some of it will be. Some of it will not, usually because it requires professional judgement, and we will tell you which parts those are.
Five minutes: what it would take. Rough build effort, rough cost, and what you would need to have in place first.
We run out of time more often than we run out of things to say. That is normal.
Not ready to talk to anyone yet? Get the free guide to the five workflows UK professional services firms should automate first.
What you leave with
A short written summary, usually within a day. It names the process we think you should automate first, says why that one rather than the obvious candidate, gives a rough cost band, and lists anything that would need fixing before a build would work.
The summary is yours. Several firms have taken it to a different provider, and one took it to their internal IT team and built it themselves. That is a fine outcome. A firm that automates its onboarding and never pays us anything is still a firm that stopped losing nine hours per client.
What happens afterwards
We send the summary. If you want to go further, the next step is usually a paid discovery sprint or a direct build proposal, depending on how clear the scope already is.
If you do not, we send one email a few weeks later asking whether the summary was useful. That is the entire follow up sequence. There is no nurture campaign.
Three questions people ask before booking
Will you try to sell me something on the call?
No, and not out of politeness. Twenty minutes is barely enough to understand one process properly. Spending any of it pitching would make the call worthless to both of us.
What if our processes are a mess?
Everyone's are. The firms that think theirs are unusually bad are usually average. The ones that describe their processes as fine are usually the ones with the most duplication, because nobody has looked.
What if we are too small?
Below roughly fifteen staff, automation often does not pay back yet, and we will say so. We would rather tell you that in twenty minutes than take a project that disappoints you.
Related reading
If you want to arrive with a view already formed, our guide to what workflow automation costs in the UK covers the numbers, and the five core processes worth automating first covers where most firms should start.
Tell us which process is costing you most, and we will tell you whether it is worth automating.
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