AI & Automation
Automation that takes the paperwork off your plate
If you copy enquiries between systems, chase missing details, or lose evenings to quotes and invoices, workflow automation removes exactly that — whether the ‘office’ is a front desk or the kitchen table at nine in the evening.
- ● Trading since 1995
- ● 4.9-star Google rating
- ● Run in our own business daily
/01 — THE REPETITIVE WORK WE REMOVE
The repetitive work we remove
Somewhere in your business, someone is copying an enquiry out of an inbox and typing it into another system. Someone else is emailing a customer for the third time to ask for a document. At month end, someone spends an afternoon pulling numbers out of three places to build the same report they built last month.
None of this is skilled work. It is relay work — moving information from where it lands to where it needs to be — and it quietly absorbs hours every week while the jobs that actually earn money wait. Workflow automation means building a system that does the relay for you: reliably, immediately, and without forgetting. It is the most practical place to start with AI and automation, because the problems are easy to recognise and the results are easy to check.
/02 — PROOF BEFORE PROMISES: THE AUTOMATIONS WE RUN OURSELVES
Proof before promises: the automations we run ourselves
We are cautious about promises, so here is our evidence: we run these automations in our own business every day. When a customer books a service, the booking flows into our diary and our records without anyone re-typing it — and if someone starts a booking but walks away, a polite follow-up goes out automatically. When a job is marked complete, a review request is queued and sent at a sensible hour. New enquiries arrive in our Slack channels with the details already attached. Our 365 AI OS demo shows the same thinking applied to a working AI desktop — a scripted demonstration, honestly labelled, that you can try before you talk to us.
We built all of this in-house and we support it ourselves. It has to work, because we depend on it — and that is the standard your build gets.
Open the 365 AI OS demo/03 — BEFORE AND AFTER: ONE ENQUIRY, TWO WAYS
Before and after: one enquiry, two ways
Before. A form enquiry arrives by email on Tuesday morning. It sits until someone has a minute. They read it, copy the details into the job system, and notice the customer left no phone number. They email to ask, mean to chase it, and get pulled onto something else. On Friday the customer, still waiting, calls someone else.
After. The same enquiry creates a record in your system the moment it arrives. A check spots the missing phone number and sends a courteous request straight back, with a reminder two days later if nothing comes in. When the customer replies, the record updates itself and the right person gets a notification with everything attached — original message, contact details, history. The human attention the enquiry needs drops from a scattered afternoon to a couple of minutes, spent on the one decision only a person can make: do we want this job, and what do we quote?
/04 — FOUR WORKFLOWS WE BUILD MOST OFTEN
Four workflows we build most often
Most of what we build falls into four patterns. Yours will be tailored to your systems, but these show the shape of the work.
Enquiry to action.
A new enquiry — web form, email, or a note from a call — is read, categorised and turned into a record in your system. An acknowledgement goes to the customer at once, and the right person on your team is notified with the details already in place. AI helps with one step: reading the free-text message and pulling out what matters. Fixed rules handle everything else.
Missing-information chasing.
The workflow knows what a complete job, file or application needs. When something is missing — a document, a signature, a reference — it asks for it, reminds politely on a schedule you set, and stops the moment the item arrives. Nobody has to remember to chase, so nothing is chased twice and nothing is forgotten.
Quote and admin orchestration.
When a quote is accepted, the follow-on admin happens in order without re-keying: the job is scheduled, confirmations go out, the paperwork is raised, and your records stay in step across quoting, calendar and invoicing. One event triggers the chain, and the chain does not skip steps.
Management reporting.
The figures you look at every week or month are collected from the systems that hold them and assembled into the same report, on schedule, without an afternoon of copy-and-paste. Where it helps, AI adds a short plain-English summary of what changed — clearly labelled as generated, with the underlying numbers always shown.
/05 — WHERE PLAIN RULES DO THE WORK — AND WHERE AI HELPS
Where plain rules do the work — and where AI helps
An honest split matters here. Most of a good workflow is deterministic automation — fixed rules and code that behave exactly the same way every time. Moving data between systems, checking whether a field is filled in, sending a message at a set time: these must be exact, so we build them with rules, not AI. Rules are faster, cheaper to run, and never have an off day.
AI earns its place only at the steps that involve reading or writing ordinary language: understanding what a free-text enquiry is actually about, drafting a reply for a person to approve, summarising a month of figures into three sentences. If a step does not need AI, we do not use it. And when a job needs AI to carry more of the load — holding a conversation, working through a task with judgement — that is an AI agent, which we build and price as its own service.
/06 — EXCEPTIONS, APPROVALS AND RETRIES
Exceptions, approvals and retries
Automation is only trustworthy if you can see and control what it does, so three safeguards are part of every build rather than optional extras.
Approvals.
Any consequential action — a message to a customer, a change to a record that matters — can be routed through a human first. The workflow prepares the work; a person clicks to release it.
Exceptions.
When a workflow meets something it does not recognise, it stops and tells a person instead of guessing. An unusual enquiry lands with your team, flagged, with everything gathered so far.
Retries and logs.
If a step fails — a system briefly offline, an email bouncing — it retries sensibly and alerts us if it keeps failing. Every run is logged, so there is always an answer to “what happened to that enquiry?”
/07 — THE SYSTEMS WE TYPICALLY CONNECT
The systems we typically connect
We connect the systems you already have rather than asking you to change them. Typical connections for Dorset businesses include Microsoft 365 email and calendars, website contact forms, booking systems, spreadsheets, accounting packages, CRMs (customer relationship management systems — the software that holds your customer records), SMS, and Slack or Teams. As a Microsoft Partner supporting Microsoft 365 every day, that side is home ground for us.
Some systems offer a proper API — a built-in way for software to exchange information directly — and some only offer exports or an email inbox. We work with either; it simply affects how the workflow is built and what it costs. You never need to pick a technology: describe the workflow, and choosing the right tools is our job.
/08 — HOW WE MEASURE WHETHER IT IS WORKING
How we measure whether it is working
Before we build anything, we agree what “working” means in numbers you can check yourself:
Response time
how long a new enquiry waits before the customer hears something.
Manual touches
how many times a person handles a job’s admin between enquiry and invoice.
Missed follow-ups
chases that should have happened and did not.
Reporting time
the hours spent assembling regular reports by hand.
We take a baseline before the workflow goes live and compare afterwards. We will not promise a percentage saving before we have seen your workflow — anyone who does is guessing — but you will know, from your own numbers, whether it is earning its keep.
/09 — WHAT SHAPES YOUR QUOTE
What shapes your quote
Every build is quoted individually, and the quote is shaped by a short list of factors you can sanity-check yourself: how many systems are involved and how well they connect; how much volume flows through the workflow; how many exception paths need handling; whether approval steps are required; and what reporting you want on top. A two-system workflow with one happy path is a small build. A chain that orchestrates quoting, scheduling, paperwork and invoicing across four systems is a larger one.
The pattern is always the same: a monthly service subscription that keeps the workflow hosted, monitored and supported by the same local team that looks after your IT, plus a one-off design and build, quoted by complexity, in writing, before work starts. Tell us what’s wasting your team’s time and we will map the workflow with you.
// SERVICE & BUILD
Monthly service — confirmed with your quote
One-off design and build — quoted by complexity The monthly service keeps your workflow hosted, monitored and supported by the same local team that looks after your IT. The build is quoted in writing, from your actual workflow, before anything is built.
// GOOD QUESTIONS
Frequently asked
Do we have to replace our existing software?
No — workflow automation is about connecting what you already have, not replacing it. We build around your current email, forms, calendar, accounts package and job systems. If a system is genuinely holding you back we will say so, but that is a separate conversation and never a condition of the work.
What happens when the automation gets something wrong?
It depends where. Steps built on fixed rules behave the same way every time, so errors there are rare and show up in the logs. Steps that involve AI — reading a message, drafting a reply — can be routed through human approval, so a person checks before anything consequential leaves the building. And when a workflow meets something it does not recognise, it is built to stop and ask rather than guess. If something does go wrong, you call the same local team that built it.
Is this AI? We are wary of it.
Mostly it is not, and that is deliberate. The bulk of every workflow is ordinary rule-based automation — plain rules and code that behave the same way every time. AI is used only at steps where reading or writing ordinary language genuinely helps, and we are happy to build workflows with no AI in them at all. You can see how we use AI openly in our 365 AI OS demo, which is a scripted demonstration and labelled as one.
What does workflow automation cost?
Two parts: a monthly service subscription that covers hosting, monitoring and support, and a one-off design and build quoted by complexity. Both are confirmed in writing with your quote before anything is built. The honest answer to “how much?” is that it depends on the number of systems, the volume and the exception handling — which is why we quote from your actual workflow rather than publishing a number that would be wrong in both directions.
How long does a build take?
It depends on scope and, honestly, on how quickly we can get access to the systems involved. A simple two-system workflow is a far smaller job than a multi-step orchestration with approvals and reporting. Timescales are confirmed alongside your quote, and we build in stages, so you see the first working step early rather than waiting for a big reveal.
Where does our data go?
Through the systems in the workflow and nowhere else. We design each workflow to touch only the data it needs, we tell you exactly which systems see what — including any AI steps — and data protection is part of the design conversation from the start, not a bolt-on. We are a family-run Dorset business, not an anonymous platform, so you always know who is accountable.
Ready to stop doing it by hand?
Describe the repetitive work and we’ll map what deterministic automation and AI can honestly take off your team’s plate.
01202 775566 · help@365techies.co.uk · MON–FRI 9AM–5PM