Book a free process audit.
A process audit is a short, structured look at where manual work is costing your team time — and an honest read on whether automating it would pay. It is free, it is written down, and the opportunity map is yours to keep whether or not anything gets built.
Personal reply from Andrew within one business day.
What happens after you send the form?
Four steps, and you can stop after any of them. The first two cost nothing, and nothing is quoted until there is something specific to quote.
A reply from Andrew
Within one business day, from the person who would do the work. Not a calendar link and not a salesperson.
A conversation
A call, or on site if that is easier and you are within reach. The subject is the process, not the software — what happens, who does it, and where it goes wrong.
The written map
The opportunity map, in writing: what is worth automating, what it would involve, and what is better left manual. Yours to keep and to show anyone.
A fixed price, or a no
If something is worth building, it is quoted fixed-price, stage by stage, before it starts. If nothing is, the map says so and there is no quote.
"The audit is free because it is how the work is found."
That is the whole commercial logic. It is not free because it is worthless, and it is not free as a lever — you keep the map either way.
"Nothing is quoted before it is understood."
A number produced before anyone has looked at the process is a guess with a decimal point. The audit exists so the quote can be fixed.
"You can stop after any stage."
And keep everything produced up to that point. There is no meter running in the background and no retainer to cancel.
What makes a process worth automating?
Most of the audit is this judgement, applied to your specific processes. The signals below are what it looks for, and roughly half the processes people raise fall on the right-hand side.
| Worth automating | Leave it manual, for now | |
|---|---|---|
| Frequency | Many times a day, or every day across several people or branches. | Once a week, by one person, in a gap they already have. |
| What happens at double the volume | The step scales with volume — twice the orders means twice the hours, and eventually another hire. | Nothing much. The step is bounded and absorbs growth without extra people. |
| Cost of getting it wrong | An error reaches a customer, a ledger or an invoice, and is expensive to unwind afterwards. | An error is caught immediately by the person doing it, at no cost beyond the redo. |
| How stable the rules are | The rules are consistent enough to write down, even if they are complicated. | Every case is a judgement call. Automating it would encode a decision that ought to stay human. |
| Where the data already lives | In systems that can be read and written — the ERP, a database, a documented API. | In email threads, a person's head, or a supplier portal with no export. |
| What the process is worth | The step is close to how the business makes money, so doing it faster and more accurately shows up in the accounts. | The step is genuine overhead. Removing it saves time nobody was charging for. |
// A process on the right-hand side is not a failure. It is a decision not to spend money.
The number that decides most of these is one very few businesses have ever calculated: what the gap costs. Not the cost of the task, but the cost of the delay it creates — between the work being done and the invoice going out, between the stock moving and the system knowing, between the question being asked and the answer being available. That number is usually either much smaller or much larger than people expect, and finding out which is most of the value of an audit.
The field service case study is that calculation carried through to a build: the expensive part was never the typing, it was the days between a technician finishing a job and anyone invoicing for it. The same page also sets out when a build like that is not worth doing, which is the other half of the same judgement.
What does it cost, and what happens afterwards?
The audit is free, and the written map is yours regardless of what you do next. There is no charge for the conversation that produces it and no obligation attached to keeping it.
Everything after the audit is quoted fixed-price, stage by stage, before it starts: prototype, build, support. You see the number, then decide. You can stop after any stage and keep everything produced up to that point, and there are no hourly meters running in the background.
The reason a fixed price is possible at all is the audit. A supplier who has not looked at the process can only quote by the hour, because they are being paid to find out what the job is. The audit moves that discovery to the front, where it is free, so the quote that follows can be a real number.
If what you actually need is a technical read on Accredo Saturn rather than a process review, the Accredo capability page covers the scripting, forms, pricing, API and reporting work directly.
Tell me what's eating the week.
The more specific you are about the process, the more useful the map is. One paragraph about the thing that costs the most time is plenty to start with — the detail comes out in the conversation.
Thanks — your request is in.
It's landed with me directly. I reply to every audit request personally, usually within one business day.
// No spam, no list. Goes straight to Andrew at solutions@xba.co.nz.
Questions about the audit itself.
Is the audit really free, and what is the catch?
It is free, and the catch is stated rather than hidden: it is how XBA finds work. Some audits lead to a quote and some do not, and the written map is yours in both cases. There is no follow-up sequence, no list, and nothing that has to be cancelled.
Do we have to be running Accredo Saturn?
No. Accredo is the deep specialty, but a process audit is about the process. If the answer turns out to involve a system XBA does not work in, the map says so — that is still a useful answer, and it costs you nothing to have it.
Who actually does the audit?
Andrew, personally. The person who reads your form is the person who has the conversation, writes the map, and would build whatever comes of it. That is the point of a one-person consultancy, and it is set out in full on the about page.
Do we need to give you access to our systems?
Not for the audit. It runs on a conversation about how the work flows and what it costs when it goes wrong. System access only becomes relevant at the prototype stage, and prototypes run against a copy of your data in a sandbox rather than your live company.
What if you conclude we should not automate anything?
Then that is what the map says, with the reasoning, and there is no quote. A recommendation to change the sequence of work, or to leave a bounded manual step exactly as it is, is a legitimate outcome and a common one. A supplier who never reaches that conclusion is not being straight with you.
Ready when you are. The audit is free — and yours to keep.
Request my free process audit