Automation · Deep dive 01
Workflow Automation
The repetitive steps your team does every day should run themselves. We wire up n8n, Zapier, Make, or custom orchestration so the hours spent on copy-paste go back into the work that compounds.
What this is
A focused engagement to identify the highest-cost manual workflows in your operation and replace them with well-instrumented, observable automation. Not a Zap graveyard — a small number of automations you can trust.
Does this sound familiar?
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Someone spends an hour a day copying data between tools.
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You have seven 'temporary' spreadsheets that have been mission-critical for two years.
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Automations exist but no one can remember which ones or where they live.
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Every month there's an outage no one notices for three days because nobody owns the automation.
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New hires are onboarded by having someone sit next to them and click through the manual steps.
The customer payoff
What changes
What you feel once it’s running.
Hours back — real time, measurable, reported monthly.
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Observability — every automation reports success/failure, with alerts for silent breakage.
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One documented register of what runs where, so nothing is tribal knowledge.
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Automations you trust enough to remove the manual fallback.
Phases
⏱ 4–8 weeks typicalHow Workflow Automation actually runs.
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01
Walk the flows
Shadow the team for two days. Count the drag. Identify the top 5 by hours-saved-per-week; everything else is parked."
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02
Design
For each automation: the happy path, the failure modes, the retry strategy, the alerting. Drawn before anything is built."
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03
Build
n8n / Zapier / Make if off-the-shelf fits; custom workers (Node / Python) if durability, retry, or state-machine logic earn it."
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04
Handover
Every automation goes into a register with an owner, a runbook, and an alert destination. Nothing is tribal.
The hand-off
The package
What lands in your hands — every artefact, nothing hidden.
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5 production automations with observability
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Automation register (who owns what, where it lives, how to fix it)
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Alert routing to a shared channel with on-call context
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Baseline metrics — time saved per month, failure rate
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One-page runbook per automation
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Training session for the ops team
Before we start
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Q·01 Zapier or n8n?
n8n when we want self-hosted, full-control, and durable workflows. Zapier when speed-to-build and nontechnical ownership matter more. Make (formerly Integromat) when the visual builder helps operators learn the logic."
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Q·02 What about existing Zaps?
We audit them as part of the walk-the-flows phase. Often 60% can go straight into the register, 30% need rework, 10% should just be deleted."
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Q·03 Can we maintain these ourselves?
That's the goal. We build for self-service, document what needs documenting, and offer an optional retainer for the first 90 days."
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Q·04 What if an automation fails at 3am?
Alert routes to whoever you pick. If you don't have on-call, we'll set up a simple 'failed X times in a row' alert that still catches everything."
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Q·05 How do you measure success?
Hours-saved per month, stated in numbers before we start. First monthly report lands 30 days after go-live with the actual vs estimated figures."
Ready to start
Stop copy-pasting. Start compounding.
Two-day walk of your actual workflows, honest estimate of the top five, clear plan. Let's find out where the drag is.
Start an automation engagementThe wider map
Every service page at a glance.
Each link below opens a dedicated page on that specific piece of one of our four service pillars. Jump sideways — different service, same way of working.
Digital Product Strategy
Service overview →Web & Mobile Development
Service overview →Business Automation
Service overview →- 01 Workflow Automation — you’re here
- 02 AI-Assisted Operations
- 03 Process Digitisation
- 04 Custom Internal Tools
- 05 System Integration & APIs
- 06 Data Pipelines & ETL