Not really, and that is deliberate. Traditional RPA drives a user interface and breaks whenever the interface changes. We integrate at the API or database level where one exists, and use AI only for the genuinely unstructured parts — reading an email, classifying an exception. Far less brittle.

Most of these processes involve judgement. Can they be automated?

Partially, which is usually enough. The pattern that works is automating the 80% that follows rules and surfacing the 20% that needs judgement with the context already assembled. Trying to automate the judgement itself is where these projects fail.

Where should we start?

The process that a senior person does weekly, that follows consistent rules, and where an error is currently caught late. That combination gives the fastest measurable return and is the cheapest to build.

What happens when the process changes?

It is code, so it changes through a pull request with a review and a test. That is materially better than the current situation, where the process changes when one person decides to do it differently and tells nobody.

By use case

Back-Office Automation

The reconciliations and handoffs nobody wants to own

Scope this for us Model the savings

Usually owned by

Finance
HR
Operations
Revenue Operations

12-20 hrs
Senior time recovered per week: 94%
Reconciliation breaks caught nightly: 1 day
Employee onboarding, from a week

The change

What actually differs afterwards

Not a maturity model. The concrete difference in how the work happens.

Today

A weekly reconciliation between two systems, done by hand
Approvals chased over email with no record of who is waiting
Employee onboarding as a checklist somebody forgets
Monthly reporting assembled by copying between spreadsheets
Institutional knowledge held by one person who is on leave

Afterwards

Reconciliation runs nightly and reports only the breaks
Approvals routed with reminders and a full audit trail
Onboarding triggered from the HR system, end to end
Reports generated from source data on a schedule
The process is documented because it is now code

The costs nobody puts in a business case

Back-office inefficiency does not appear on a P&L line. It appears as a financial controller spending Thursday afternoons in Excel, a founder approving expenses from their phone at midnight, and a monthly close that takes nine days because three systems disagree and someone has to work out why.

None of it is urgent. All of it compounds.

What good looks like

Reconciliation. Runs nightly, not monthly. Reports only breaks, with both source records attached. Breaks found the next morning are cheap; breaks found at close are an investigation.

Approvals. Routed by rule, with automatic reminders, escalation on age, and a record of who approved what and when. Email threads are not an approval workflow, and they do not survive an audit.

Onboarding and offboarding. Triggered from the HR system. Accounts, access, equipment, introductions and the first-week checklist, all executed and tracked. This also closes the most common security gap in a growing company.

Reporting. Generated from source systems on a schedule, with the numbers traceable back. If your board pack is assembled by hand, some part of it is wrong this month and nobody knows which part.

Sequencing matters

Some automations make the next one cheap. Getting clean, reliable data out of a source system is worth doing before three separate processes that all depend on it. The readiness audit sequences the backlog on that basis, which is why the second and third automations usually cost less than the first.

FAQ

Questions we get asked

Let's find out what is actually automatable

Bring a process that annoys you. In 30 minutes we will tell you whether AI helps, what it would cost, and where it would fail — even if the answer is don't bother.

Book a consultation Get a quote

Or email [email protected] · we reply within 1 business day