Solution
Someone on your team is the software
Replacing a manual process means finding the work with high volume, clear inputs and a checkable output, then automating it with evaluation and human review built in. Document extraction, ticket triage, data entry and research are the usual candidates. Most builds run four to eight weeks from $12,000.
Sound familiar?
This is usually what it looks like from the inside.
If two or three of these land, we have built the fix before.
Someone spends a day a week reading documents and retyping the fields.
A file gets exported from one system and imported into another every Monday.
Tickets get triaged by whoever opens the inbox first.
Your team pastes the same context into a chat window twenty times a day.
The process only works because one person remembers how it works.
How we fix it
What actually changes.
In this order, because getting the order wrong is the usual reason these projects stall.
- 01
Time the work and price it
We count the volume and calculate what automation is worth before building anything. If the number is small we tell you and stop.
- 02
Build the evaluation first
Real cases labelled, a pass threshold agreed. Without this there is no way to know whether the automation is right, only whether it feels right.
- 03
Deterministic where it matters
Not every step should be a model call. The parts that must be exact stay exact, and the model handles the parts that need judgement.
- 04
Shadow run, then cut over
It runs alongside your team for a week. Disagreements get reviewed and fed back before anyone trusts it.
The work itself
Services this draws on
AI Automation and Agent Development
Agents and automations aimed at one expensive manual process, with evaluation and guardrails built in.
From $12,000 →Custom Integrations and API Development
Middleware, private apps and file based pipelines for the platforms that never made it to anyone’s marketplace.
From $7,500 →Full Stack Web Application Development
Customer portals, internal tools and SaaS products on a stack your team can hire for.
From $30,000 →
The real alternative
The other option is hiring someone and teaching them everything.
Most people weigh us against a salary. It is worth being honest about what the salary actually buys, because the wage is the cheapest line in it.
Hire and train someone
- Time to first useful output
- 3 to 6 months
- Recruiting and onboarding
- 4 to 10 weeks before they start
- Who trains them
- Your most senior person, for months
- Who reviews the work
- Also your most senior person
- Breadth
- One person, one skill set
- If they leave
- The knowledge leaves with them
- Annual cost
- $95k to $160k, plus benefits and tools
Bring us in
- Time to first useful output
- Week one, a written scope
- Recruiting and onboarding
- None. We start inside two weeks
- Who trains them
- Nobody. We arrive knowing the stack
- Who reviews the work
- We do, and you see it weekly
- Breadth
- Product, data, AI, commerce and CRM
- If we leave
- Documentation and code you already own
- Cost
- A fixed project fee, agreed before we start
None of this argues against hiring. A permanent team is the right answer once the work is continuous and someone internal can lead it. It is the wrong answer when you need one thing built well, once, and you need it this quarter. We will tell you which situation you are in on the first call.
Salary range reflects US market rates for a mid to senior full stack developer or a HubSpot administrator, before employer taxes, benefits, equipment and software. Ramp times are our own observation across client teams rather than a published figure, and yours may be shorter.
Next step
Tell us where you are stuck.
A short call, no deck. We will tell you what we would do, roughly what it costs, and whether you actually need us, sometimes the answer is that you do not.