Business Process Automation
Business Process Automation That Actually Reaches Production
Identify repetitive work, redesign the process, and automate it across the systems your team already uses.
Most automation programmes stall between the strategy deck and the working system. We start at the other end: one process, built and measured.
- Fixed scope
- Measurable ROI
- Human-in-the-loop
- Works with your existing stack
Trusted on complex technology delivery
Does any of this look familiar?
These are the symptoms we see before the numbers get measured.
- People copy information between systems that should talk to each other
- Excel is acting as middleware between two applications
- Approvals happen through email threads nobody can audit
- The same data is entered twice, in two places, by two people
- Reports are assembled by hand every week or month
- Staff spend their days chasing missing information
- A critical workflow depends entirely on one person knowing the steps
What this process costs you today
Before anyone talks about technology, it is worth knowing the number you are trying to beat.
A worked example
Modelled estimate3 employees × 8 hours/week of repetitive processing = 1,248 hours/year.
At $45/hour loaded cost
$56,160
annual process cost
If automation removes
60%
of the manual effort
Recoverable capacity
$33,696
per year
Three people, one process, before counting error rework or the cost of delay.
Now run it on your own volumes
Your current process
Assumptions
- Fully loaded hourly cost of the staff running the process today
- Rework estimated at 1.5x the original handling time per failed item
- Automatable share of 55–75%, typical for a scoped back-office process
- Payback modelled against a typical single-process implementation investment
Your estimated opportunity
Modelled estimate- Current estimated annual cost
- $147,150≈ 2.0 FTE of manual effort
- Potential automatable effort
- 55–75%
- Indicative payback
- 2 months
- Potential annual opportunity
- $80,933 – $110,363
Directional planning estimate based on your inputs — not a quote or a substitute for finance sign-off.
How we work
- 1
Map
Sit with the people doing the work and document the process as it actually runs — including the workarounds nobody wrote down.
- 2
Measure
Establish a baseline: volume, handling time, error and rework rate, and what the process costs you today.
- 3
Build
Redesign the workflow and build it against your real systems and data — not a mockup or a slide.
- 4
Validate
Test against edge cases, confirm exception handling and approval gates, and measure the result against the baseline.
- 5
Deploy
Move into production with monitoring, runbooks and training — or recommend against it if the numbers do not hold up.
Before and after
A typical back-office process, before and after
Today
- Request arrives by email or form
- Someone re-keys it into a spreadsheet
- Spreadsheet emailed for approval
- Approver replies; someone updates the system
- Status chased manually until closed
Automated
- Request captured on arrival
- Data extracted and validated automatically
- Routed to the right approver with context
- System of record updated on approval
- Only exceptions reach a human
What we automate
- Invoice processing
- Client onboarding
- Approval workflows
- Data entry and re-keying
- Case routing and triage
- Report generation
- Document handling
- Supplier onboarding
- Employee onboarding
What you receive
- Current-state process map
- Measured cost and volume baseline
- Redesigned target workflow
- Working automation on your systems
- Exception handling and approval gates
- Monitoring, runbooks and training
- Measured result against the baseline
Traditional consultancy vs New Odyssey
| Traditional consultancy | New Odyssey | |
|---|---|---|
| What you receive | A strategy deck and a roadmap | A working, deployed workflow |
| Time to first result | Months of discovery | One process, one sprint |
| Commercial model | Open-ended day rates | Fixed scope, fixed fee |
| Who builds it | Handed to your team or a third party | The people who scoped it build it |
| How success is judged | Deliverables accepted | Measured against the baseline we recorded |
What the numbers say
Every figure is labelled by where it comes from — measured customer results, industry benchmarks, modelled estimates, or commitments we make to you.
75%
Reduction in onboarding time
55–75%
Of manual effort typically automatable
Production
The deliverable is a running system, not a deck
4–5 weeks
From proven sprint to production
Technology we build on
We are not tied to one platform. The right tool depends on the workflow, your existing stack, and what you can maintain.
How we keep it safe
Human approval gates
You decide which decisions an automation may make alone and which require a person. Thresholds are configured to your policy.
Exception handling
Anything ambiguous, incomplete or out of policy routes to a named owner with the reason attached — it does not fail silently.
Audit trail
Every action is logged: what ran, on what input, what it decided, and who approved it. Built for audit and incident review.
Least-privilege access
Automations connect through credentialed, scoped integrations you grant and can revoke. Your systems stay the system of record.
How engagements run
Each stage is a decision point. You only continue if the previous stage justified it.
Process Assessment
Map one process, quantify what it costs today, and get a fixed implementation recommendation.
Fixed fee, credited against a SprintStage 2Automation Sprint
Redesign and build the workflow, then prove whether the economics justify scaling it.
Fixed scope, fixed feeStage 3Production Implementation
Harden a validated workflow for real users, real data, security, monitoring and scale.
Scoped from the Sprint findingsStage 4Managed Automation
Keep automations reliable as systems, rules and volumes change.
Monthly retainerBusiness Process Automation FAQs
Find a process worth automating
Start with a Process Assessment: one process mapped, measured and costed, with a fixed implementation proposal.