The Disciplines Plate III Intelligent Automation
Intelligent
Automation.
The boring work, handled. The hours, returned.
Workflows and custom code that stitch your tools together and quietly do their job while you get on with something worth doing. Commissioned work for small businesses across Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.
Return to the workshopHow much time does your team spend copying data between systems? Sending the same emails? Creating reports manually? Chasing information across four different places nobody remembers signing up to?
These tasks don't just waste time - they're error-prone, demotivating, and keep your team from work that actually needs human judgement. I build automation workflows that handle the repetitive grunt work, so the people you pay good money stay focused on the things that matter.
I build on self-hosted automation rather than subscription services, so your workflows run on infrastructure you control and cost you nothing per execution, however often they fire. Platforms are excellent right up until the job outgrows them, which happens sooner than the demos suggest, and at that point I drop to custom code rather than fight the tool. For more complex requirements I build custom integrations in Python or Node.js directly.
§ What I automate
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I.
Data sync & integration
New customer in CRM? Add them to the email platform. Order placed? Update inventory and notify fulfillment. No more manual data entry, no more "which system is right?" headaches.
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II.
Email & notification workflows
Smart sequences triggered by events. Onboarding, order confirmations, follow-ups, internal alerts - all personalised, all automated. Works with Gmail, Outlook, or any mail system with an API.
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III.
Document generation
Quotes, invoices, contracts, reports - generated from templates against your live data. Twenty-minute manual jobs become twenty-second background tasks.
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IV.
Automated reporting
Daily, weekly, or monthly reports compiled from multiple sources, formatted nicely, delivered to the right people. No more Friday afternoons lost to rebuilding the same spreadsheet.
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V.
Scheduling & booking
Appointment flows that sync with Google Calendar, Outlook, or Radicale. Reminder emails, confirmation texts, rescheduling - handled quietly in the background.
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VI.
Smart alerts & monitoring
Low inventory? Alert. Customer complaint? Escalate. Website down? Immediate notification. Set the rules once, the system watches twenty-four hours a day.
§ The process
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Step 1
Process mapping
Document the current manual process step-by-step. What triggers the task? What data is needed, from where? This reveals inefficiencies and automation opportunities nobody noticed.
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Step 2
Workflow design
Design the automated flow, including error handling, edge cases, and failure recovery. You see a visual diagram of exactly how it'll work - decision points, data transformations, integrations.
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Step 3
Build & test
Build it, as a workflow or as custom code depending on what the job actually needs, and test against real data. Handle edge cases, build in error notifications, ensure nothing breaks silently.
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Step 4
Deploy & monitor
Deploy to your infrastructure (or I host). Initial monitoring ensures everything runs smoothly. Documentation of what it does and training for any manual intervention points.
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Step 5
Refine & expand
After running in production I gather feedback and refine. Often I uncover adjacent automation opportunities once the first one is working - I can expand as your needs evolve.
Questions, answered
Will this stop working when something changes?
Automations break when the thing underneath them moves; that is the nature of them. They are built to fail loudly rather than quietly, and monitored, so the first person to know is you rather than a customer.
Is there a per-run fee?
No. Automations run on infrastructure you control, so the cost is the commission and the hosting, not a charge every time the work happens. Platforms that bill per execution punish you exactly when the automation is working.
What does a commission cost?
Work is quoted per commission, after a conversation. There is no day rate to quote at you and no package to fit into, because the shape of the job decides the price and nobody knows the shape yet. The first half hour is free, and it usually settles the question of whether this is a small piece of work or a large one before any money is discussed.
Who owns the code when it is finished?
You do. Outright, including the source. It is handed over with the runbooks needed to keep it running, and there is no licence to renew and no seat to pay for. Commissions, not subscriptions, is meant literally.
What happens if you are unavailable?
Everything is built to be picked up by somebody else: ordinary technologies, readable code, written runbooks and no proprietary lock-in. It is a fair question to ask a one-person workshop, and the answer has to be in the work rather than in a promise.
Do you work outside Suffolk and Cambridgeshire?
Yes. Local work gets the option of somebody in the room, which is worth more than it sounds for the first conversation and the handover. Everything after that is done remotely for most clients anyway.