Enquiries sit until someone is free
A quote request lands at 16:50 on a Friday and is read on Monday morning. Nothing has gone wrong. The inbox is simply a queue with no owner outside office hours.
BUSINESS AUTOMATION · DOCUMENTS · ADMIN
Finish the job. Without starting the admin again.
If the same information gets read, copied and chased every day, there may be a better way. We automate repeatable steps in enquiries, documents and records, with checks and a clear route to a person when judgement is needed.
01 · Where the hours go
The work nobody was hired to do. Still gets done by hand.
The same information typed three times
It arrives by email, gets typed onto a job sheet, then typed again into the accounts system. Every retype is another chance to lose a digit off a postcode or a purchase order.
Nobody can see what is waiting
Work in progress lives in individual inboxes and in people's heads. Something urgent only becomes visible when the customer rings up to ask about the silence.
02 · What we actually build
Small machines that do one job. And tell you when they cannot.
Each workflow covers an agreed repeating step, with validation checks, review points and a fallback route. We test its limits before deciding what can run without approval.
01
Enquiry capture and triage
Enquiries on the channels we agree to cover are read as they land, categorised, given an urgency and put in front of the named person for that category, with the postcode, job type and contact details already pulled out of the message.
READ ON ARRIVAL 02Summarising and drafting
Long email threads, call notes and attachments reduced to a short factual summary, with a suggested reply your team edits and sends rather than writes from nothing.
DRAFTED, NOT WRITTEN 03Document handling
Invoices, forms, certificates and PDFs read once and turned into structured fields that flow into the systems you already run, instead of being retyped by hand.
LESS RETYPING 04Routine admin removed
Chasing, reminders, status updates, filing, weekly reports. The jobs that need doing on time but need no thought are handed to a scheduled process that logs what it sent and to whom.
RUNS ON A SCHEDULE 05Alerting and human sign-off
Thresholds you set decide what runs quietly and what stops for a human. Anything unusual, expensive or legally weighted waits for a named person to approve it.
STAYS IN CONTROL
03 · How we approach it
We automate the boring half. Not the judgement half.
We start by watching the work rather than by choosing a tool. Which messages arrive, who touches them, where they stall, what a good outcome looks like and which cases the team quietly sets aside because they do not fit the process. Automation is only worth building where the same decision is made the same way every time. Anything that needs a person to weigh something up stays with that person, by design.
You keep the switch. Every automated step is visible and logged, and any of them can be paused and handed back to a person. Where a step cannot be undone once it has run, it stops for approval first. We will also say when a task is too varied to automate safely, or when the honest answer is a better form and a clearer process rather than any AI at all.
04 · How it is delivered
Built in the open. Switched on in stages.
Shadow the task
We sit with the people doing the work and record how the queue actually behaves: what arrives and when, the exceptions, the awkward cases nobody has written down. What we watch there decides what gets built first.
Run it alongside
The first version runs in parallel with the manual process. It suggests, your team decides and we compare the two outputs case by case, so the call on letting it run unsupervised is yours and based on what you have watched it do.
Agree the limits
Together we agree what it may do unsupervised, what it must escalate, what it must never touch and who receives the alert when something falls outside those rules. Those limits are written in plain English and kept next to the off switch, not buried in the code.
Hand over the controls
Your team gets the dashboard, the off switch and the training to use both. We stay on while the thresholds are being adjusted against real traffic, then move to a support arrangement you can end.
05 · What people ask first
Before you start. Practical questions, answered.
What to consider when deciding whether this work is right for your business.
Can it read a supplier invoice and get it into Xero or Sage without anyone typing?
Often yes, and sometimes you should not pay us for that. Dext already does supplier-invoice capture into the main accounts packages and does it well. We say so when that is the answer. We build the reader ourselves when the document is unusual, when routing depends on your own approval rules, or when the destination is a system no product supports.
Our supervisors send timesheets in as photos and someone retypes them into payroll. Can that stop?
Usually. The photo is read into fields, name, site, date and hours worked, and anything the reader is not sure about is held in a queue for a person to confirm before it reaches payroll. What gets rekeyed becomes the exception rather than every sheet that came in.
Enquiries land in our Microsoft 365 shared inbox outside office hours. Can something triage them?
Yes. Each message is categorised as it arrives and assigned to the named person who owns that category, so nothing is sitting unread and unowned when the office opens. Anything the classifier cannot place goes to a fallback owner rather than staying exactly where it landed. Where enquiries arrive
Customers ring us to check we received their form. Can that call be avoided?
Yes. The acknowledgement goes out on receipt and carries a reference taken from the record created at that moment, so the sender has something to quote and your team can find it in one search. That single reference removes a whole category of call from the queue.
We already pay for Zapier and Microsoft Power Automate. Why would we need you?
Often you do not. If the problem fits one of their connectors, they are the cheaper answer and they should keep the job. Those tools stop being enough when a step needs judgement, when one of the systems has no connector at all, when a failed run has to retry safely instead of failing quietly, or when nobody can say any more what a long flow actually does.
Where does our data actually go if a model is reading our emails?
Usually to a model provider, which is why the contract matters more than the demo. Every call is written to a log you hold, so you can see which fields left your systems and when, and the processing terms are read before anything is switched on. If that log cannot exist, neither can the automation. How the work runs
WORKING EXAMPLESWebsites built for businesses we own and run
WRITTEN SCOPEDeliverables and price agreed before work begins
DIRECT CONTACTA named person responsible for your project
CLEAR HANDOVERAccounts, access, documentation and support agreed up front
06 · Where this lands
Where the queue never stops. And the clock is the problem.
FOR INSURANCE BROKERS AND MGAS
Less rekeying
Explore document handling, enquiry workflows and connections between policy, CRM and finance systems.
EXPLORE → FOR SOLICITORS AND LAW FIRMSGive your people more time
Reduce repeated requests, scattered updates and manual copying between systems.
EXPLORE → FOR ROADSIDE AND RECOVERY OPERATORSFrom the first details
Connect enquiry handling, dispatch records and accounts around the way your recovery operation works.
EXPLORE →Good automation is invisible from the outside. What changes is inside the building: the enquiry is already categorised and dated when someone opens it, and the postcode is typed once rather than three times. Only the exceptions are left on the desk. The judgement never leaves the room.
NEXT · Tell us what you want to improve
Start with the change you want to make.
Describe the task you keep repeating and the tools involved. We will help establish whether configuration, automation or a small build is the right next step.