Workflow Audit · Step 03 of five

When the problem isn't one workflow.

One Workflow Built takes five days and fixes one thing, and that is the right purchase when you can name the task and it never leaves one team. Some work isn't shaped like that. It crosses three departments and four systems, and every handoff is a place where it waits, gets retyped, or goes missing.

This is a different kind of work, not a longer version of the same work. One to two weeks, $3,500, and what you get is a map: how the work and the data actually move end to end, a dollar figure on each step, and a roadmap of what to automate in what order. It credits toward whatever you build from it. Work first. Then the AI.

You priced this work at a year.

That figure came from one workflow. If the work crosses departments, the real number is larger, and this is how you find out where it actually goes.

Book the audit Not sure it's the right scope? Email me →
$3,500One process, end to end
1–2 wksInterviews and mapping
CreditedToward implementation
PricedA number per handoff
Where this starts

Two ways people arrive here.

Most of the time this is not the first thing someone buys. It is what they buy after discovering the problem is wider than one workflow.

From one step below

The bottleneck turned out to be the handoffs.

Sometimes the Strategy Session shows the problem isn't one task, it's four handoffs between five people. Sometimes it's the build that shows it: the workflow now runs clean, and the process around it still doesn't.

Either way you learned the same thing, which is that fixing one workflow fixed one seam. Your $250 session credits against this.

One Workflow Built, $1,500 →

Straight in

You already know it crosses departments.

If you can already name the three teams and the four systems involved, there is nothing to establish first. Start here.

The free readiness check is still worth five minutes first, because the annual cost figure it produces becomes the baseline the audit is measured against.

Take the free check first →

The word that gets abused

Three things get sold as an AI audit. Two of them you can't act on.

The difference is whether the output is about your organisation in the abstract or about one process in particular.

Common

A maturity assessment

"You score 2.4 out of 5."

Scores you against somebody's framework across governance, data, talent and strategy. Reads well to a board. Nobody can start work on Monday from a 2.4.

Common

A tool evaluation

"Here's the platform to buy."

Compares vendors for a process that has never been mapped. It can pick the best runner in the wrong race, and you find out after procurement.

This

A workflow audit

"Step six costs you $41,000 a year."

Follows one real process from the moment work arrives to the moment it's done. Names every handoff, prices each one, and puts them in the order that makes arithmetic sense.

A finding you can't put a dollar figure on is an opinion with a chart on it.

The engagement

What actually happens.

Two weeks is the full shape, for a process that genuinely crosses several teams. One process inside one department usually lands in a week. Published for the same reason the session agenda is published: you should be able to decide whether this is worth $3,500 without a sales call.

Days 1–2

The people who do the work

Interviews with the people whose hands are actually on it, not only the people who manage it. These two descriptions never match, and the gap between them is usually where the cost is hiding.

Days 3–5

The map

Every step, every system, every handoff. Who touches it, what they do, how long it waits before the next person picks it up, and where the same information gets typed a second time.

Days 6–7

The cost model

Loaded hourly cost against measured time, per step. This is the part that turns priority from an argument into arithmetic, and it is the part most audits skip.

Days 8–9

The roadmap

What to automate, in what order, and what to leave alone. Each item has a cost to build, a cost to run, and the annual figure it removes. Including the ones I recommend against.

Day 10

Walkthrough

We go through the map and the roadmap with whoever has to approve the spend. You keep the written audit either way, and nothing in it obligates you to buy the next thing.

Also

The data boundary

Where client, patient or financial information crosses a line it shouldn't. This falls out of the mapping for free, and it is often the finding that gets acted on first.

Book the audit.

$3,500, one to two weeks. It credits toward whatever you build from it.

Book the audit
What you keep

Four documents, and none of them are a slide deck.

What you get

  • The process map, end to end, with every handoff and wait state named
  • A cost model with a dollar figure per step and per handoff, and the method shown so you can rerun it
  • A sequenced roadmap: cost to build, cost to run, annual figure removed, in priority order
  • A data boundary note: what currently crosses which line, and what should not

Why the map has to come first.

Large AI projects get written off for a boring reason. They were scoped against somebody's description of the work rather than the work, so the exceptions nobody mentioned turn out to be forty percent of the volume. The map is what makes a fixed price honest, which is why the Private AI Build cannot be bought without one.

When this is the wrong purchase

If it lives in one team, don't buy this.

You already know which task is the problem, and it never leaves one department.

Then you don't need weeks of mapping. You need the thing built. Buy the $1,500 build, or the $250 session first if you want the plan before you commit to the week.

Spending $3,500 to confirm what you could already name is the kind of purchase that makes people distrust consultants, and I would rather send you down one step than take it.

One Workflow Built, $1,500 →

Where this sits

Five offers. This is the third one.

They run in price order and in dependency order, and that isn't a coincidence. Each one produces the input the next one needs. You can stop after any of them and still be better off than when you started.

Book the audit.

$3,500, one to two weeks, and it credits toward whatever you build from it. If the work sits inside one team, start one step lower instead. It's cheaper and it's the right answer.

Book the audit Start with the free check, it prices the work in five minutes →