Back-Office Workflow Automation
The repetitive internal process mapped, automated where it is safe, and left with a person wherever judgement or liability sits.
- To first release
- 2 weeks
- Human checkpoints
- Explicit
- Temporal
- Python
- PostgreSQL
- Claude
- Slack API
The problem
Every operations team has a process that grew rather than being designed. It works because someone remembers the exceptions, which makes it slow, unauditable, and a genuine risk when that person is on leave. The instinct is to automate all of it; the mistake is automating the parts where being wrong is expensive.
How we would sequence it
- 01Map the process as it actually runs, including the exceptions nobody documented
- 02Separate the steps that are safe to automate from the ones that carry judgement or liability
- 03Automate the first group end to end, with retries and an audit trail
- 04Give the second group a queue, a clear interface and an escalation path
- 05Instrument throughput and exception rates so the effect is visible
This solution describes our method for a class of problem. It is not a record of a completed client engagement, and the figures above are scope estimates rather than measured results.
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