Replace copy-paste with a workflow you can inspect
A lead arrives. Information is captured. The lead is qualified. The CRM is updated. The sales team is notified. Follow-up is scheduled. That is automation, not a mysterious “bot.” We build those paths across the software you already run, and we write new software when the path has nowhere to live. We do not want to automate a bad process. We want to understand it first.
Automation that survives a messy Tuesday
Most automation demos assume clean payloads and a single happy path. Real operations have duplicates, partial addresses, a vendor API that times out, and a manager on leave. A serious workflow names those states: retry, escalate, wait for a human. If we cannot draw the exception, we will not hide it inside a connector that silently drops rows.
Problems this work is for
- Handoffs that live in chat
A deal, ticket or application is “done” when someone pings someone. You need status, owner and a timestamp the next person can trust.
- Re-keying between systems
The same customer is typed into CRM, billing and support. Sync should be explicit: direction, conflict rules, and what happens when a match fails.
- Approvals that stall in email
Discounts, refunds, hiring, content publish. A queue with an audit trail beats a thread nobody can search.
- Notifications that cry wolf
Everyone is copied; nobody acts. Alerts should map to a state change and a role, with a way to snooze or reassign.
- Month-end archaeology
Ops reconstructs what happened from inboxes. Events should be written when the work happens.
- A brittle no-code spaghetti
Dozens of undocumented zaps. We can replace the spine with something you can test, or document and constrain what stays.
What we typically build
- Intake and routing
Forms, email parse, or API entry into a queue with rules for assignment and priority.
- Approvals and four-eyes
Thresholds, delegates, and a record of who approved what, including the payload they saw.
- Integration jobs
Scheduled and event-driven sync with retries, idempotency keys and visible failure.
- Document-centric flows
A document is uploaded, information is extracted, data is validated, the system is updated, a person reviews it when necessary.
- Marketing and CRM plumbing
Lead capture to CRM to follow-up without losing source or consent flags.
- Operator consoles
The screen where exceptions are worked. Automation without this screen is how work disappears.
Where this usually shows up
- Professional services intake to delivery
Inquiry, conflict check, engagement open, staffing, billing trigger.
- Education admin load
Enrollment packets, section changes, staff notifications around an LMS.
- Commerce operations
Order to warehouse to customer notice, including holds and partials.
- Internal tools in technology companies
Access requests, vendor onboarding, incident follow-ups that should not live in a wiki.
How an automation engagement runs
- Discovery
Walk the current path with the people who do it. Capture volume, exception rate, and which system is allowed to win a conflict.
- Scope
One process first. Define success as “this state is always true,” not “we automated everything.”
- Architecture
Triggers, queues, credentials, retry policy, and the human inbox for poison messages.
- Build with dry runs
Replay historical cases in staging. Compare to what a human did. Fix the mismatches before they hit production.
- Launch with a kill switch
Turn the path on for a subset. Watch failures. Then widen. Iterate on the exceptions that actually appear.
Show us the handoff that breaks
Name the systems, the owner of the record, and the exception that happens every week. We will say whether this is a workflow, an integration, an AI step, or a missing source of truth.