Masterclass
How to find the first 3 AI automations worth building in your business
The full method we use on a workflow review, in about half an hour. Built for operations leaders at $5M to $30M companies who are being pitched AI and have no framework for judging any of it.
- For businesses with $5M to $30M in revenue
- 10 modules
- No pitch until the last minute
What’s covered
Ten modules, in the order you would actually do them
Nothing here is theory. It is the sequence we follow on a real engagement, with the judgement calls left in.
- 01
Where to look
The four places in a mid-size company where recoverable time reliably hides, and the order to inspect them in.
- 02
Which workflows not to automate
Low volume, unstable rules, contested ownership, or a process that needs changing rather than accelerating.
- 03
How to calculate process cost
Volume, time per item, loaded cost, rework and the cost of the error itself — including how to time a sample honestly.
- 04
Where AI genuinely helps
Unstructured input, fuzzy classification, retrieval and drafting. The specific shapes worth paying for.
- 05
Where ordinary automation is better
Arithmetic, lookups, thresholds and validation. Why a rule you can write down should be code.
- 06
Assessing implementation complexity
What makes a workflow cheap or expensive to automate, and the questions that reveal it in ten minutes.
- 07
Calculating ROI properly
The eight terms, including the residual manual work and the ongoing run cost that most business cases omit.
- 08
Launching safely
Confidence thresholds, human approval, running in parallel, and how to decide when it is safe to switch over.
- 09
Measuring the result
Choosing the KPI, capturing the baseline before you build, and what to watch for drift after launch.
- 10
A real walkthrough
One order-entry workflow, mapped end to end, with the eleven opportunities and which three we would build.
Who this is for
The person accountable for the process, not for buying AI.
Operations leaders, finance and service managers, and founders who can see manual work accumulating but do not yet have a defensible way to rank it. You do not need technical knowledge. You do need access to the people who perform the work and a willingness to time a real sample instead of accepting an estimate.
It is less useful if you have already selected a product and only need a tutorial, or if the goal is a company-wide AI strategy. The method begins with one workflow because that is the smallest unit where cost, risk and an outcome can all be measured.
What the worksheet produces
- 01A shortlist of processes ranked by volume, stability, recoverable capacity and blast radius.
- 02A current-cost calculation using time, loaded labour, rework and error cost.
- 03A boundary between deterministic rules, integrations, AI-assisted work and human judgement.
- 04A first-pilot brief with acceptance criteria, fallback, baseline and operating owner.
- 05A list of reasons not to build, so weak opportunities stop before they become projects.
Want us to do this against your operations?
The masterclass teaches you the method. The workflow review is us running it on your business and handing you the Automation Opportunity Map at the end — three opportunities, their estimated complexity and capacity impact, and a recommended first pilot.
Or skip straight to the workflow.
If you already know which process is costing you the most, describe it and we will come back with the arithmetic.
- For businesses with $5M to $30M in revenue
- No long-term commitment
- Start with one workflow
- Keep ownership of everything we build