Workflow automation
We connect the tools you already use so work moves between them without a person acting as the relay. Built in Make, n8n, Zapier or Power Automate, inside your own accounts, with error handling and failure alerting in every flow.
What counts as a workflow automation?
Anything where a defined trigger should produce a defined sequence of actions across your systems, and currently produces a task for a person instead.
A form is submitted, so a CRM record should be created, a Slack message should fire, and a follow-up task should appear with a due date. Nothing about that requires judgement. It requires four logins and eleven minutes, every time, from someone who was hired to do something else.
The workflows we are asked for most
- Lead capture to first response. Web form or inbound email into HubSpot or Salesforce, deduplicated, enriched, routed to the right owner, with an acknowledgement sent inside a minute.
- Quote and proposal generation. A single intake form produces a populated proposal document, logs the opportunity, and sends it for signature.
- Client onboarding. Signature triggers folder creation, project setup from template, CRM status change, first invoice, and a queued welcome email.
- Order to cash. Order lands, stock is checked, fulfilment is triggered, the invoice is raised in Xero or QuickBooks, and payment is reconciled when it arrives.
- Approval chains that chase themselves. Requests route by amount, escalate on a timer, and log the decision trail without anyone forwarding an email.
- Hiring and onboarding. Application intake, screening questions scored, interview scheduling, offer pack assembly, then IT and payroll setup on day one.
- Recurring reporting. Numbers pulled from source on a schedule, formatted, and delivered to Slack or email already readable.
Which platform will you build it in?
Whichever is cheapest to own for your situation, not whichever we prefer.
Make.com is our usual default for SMB work: strong connector library, visual enough for your team to follow, priced per operation. n8n when you want self-hosting, unlimited executions at a fixed cost, or logic complex enough that per-operation pricing gets expensive. Zapier when the workflow is simple and your team already lives in it. Power Automate when you are deep in Microsoft 365 and the licence is already paid for. Plain Python on a schedule when the job is heavy data processing and a visual tool would just add cost and latency.
We will show you the running-cost comparison before we choose. A workflow that costs $40 a month in Make operations and $0 in self-hosted n8n is a real difference over three years.
Every build includes
- Error handling and retry logic on every external call
- Failure alerting to Slack, Teams or email
- A parallel run against the live manual process before cutover
- A documented manual fallback for when a vendor has an outage
- Plain-language runbook and architecture diagram
- Recorded walkthrough for your team
- Credentials stored in your vault, not ours
What drives the price
Build projects run $8,000 to $35,000. The variables, in order of impact:
- Number of systems. Two is straightforward. Six is a different project.
- API quality. A documented REST API is easy. A system with no API needs a workaround, and that is where cost appears.
- Exception count. Ten branches of "except when" is most of the engineering.
- Data cleanliness. Duplicate or inconsistent records often need fixing first.
- Volume. High throughput changes the architecture and the platform choice.
A concrete example: inbound lead handling
Before
Enquiries arrive through a website form into a shared inbox. Someone checks the inbox a few times a day. For each one they search HubSpot to see whether the company already exists, create or update the record, decide which of four salespeople owns the territory, assign it, paste the enquiry text into the notes, and send a holding reply from a saved template.
Cost of that: around 9 minutes per lead, plus an average response delay of about four hours — longer overnight and at weekends. Duplicate records accumulate because the search step gets skipped when things are busy.
After
The form posts straight into a Make scenario. It checks HubSpot for an existing company by domain, creates or updates the record, applies the territory rules, assigns the owner, writes the enquiry into the note field, posts to the sales Slack channel, and sends the acknowledgement.
Result: acknowledgement inside 60 seconds including overnight, no duplicate records because the match runs every time, and the 9 minutes goes away entirely. Anything the rules cannot classify — an unrecognised territory, a malformed submission — is posted to Slack for a human instead of being guessed at.
Illustrative of the pattern and the level of detail we scope to. Named-client case studies are published with permission.
Common questions
Can we not just build this ourselves in Zapier?
Often, yes, and for simple two-step automations you should. The point where it stops being worth doing in-house is usually one of three things: the logic grows enough branches that nobody can safely change it, it starts touching money or customer communication and needs real error handling, or the person who built it leaves. If your workflow is a trigger and two actions, build it yourself. We would rather tell you that than take the money.
What if one of our systems has no API?
There is usually a route: a scheduled file export over SFTP, a database connection, an email-parsing bridge, or browser automation as a last resort. Each one is less robust than a real API and we price and flag that honestly, including what happens when the vendor changes their interface. Occasionally the answer is that the integration is not worth building until you replace that system.
How do you test before going live?
We run the automation in parallel with your existing manual process on real data, typically for one to two weeks depending on volume, and compare outputs line by line. Discrepancies get fixed while the manual process is still there to catch them. We only cut over when the outputs match, and we keep the manual fallback documented afterwards.
Who pays for the platform licences?
You do, directly, in your own account. We do not resell Make, n8n or Zapier subscriptions or take a margin on them. During the audit we estimate the monthly running cost so it is part of the decision, not a surprise afterwards.
What if we want to change the workflow later?
Your team can, using the documentation and walkthrough we provide — that is the point of building in visual platforms rather than pure code. If you would rather we handled changes, that is what the support retainer covers, and it includes a monthly allowance for exactly this.
Tell us what your team is doing by hand
A 30-minute scoping call, no charge. We will tell you whether it is a good automation candidate and roughly what it would cost.
Related: Automation audit · System integrations · Automation support