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Automation and integration
Automation and integration
Work that stops being done by hand
Most enquiries here start the same way. A process runs across three or four systems, somebody copies data between them every week, and the errors that creep in are only caught later by someone else.
We take that process apart, connect the systems properly, and put the exception handling in place so the automation fails loudly instead of quietly. The building is usually straightforward. Agreeing what should happen in the awkward cases is the work.
Connecting systems
Two systems hold the same information and neither knows about the other. Orders arrive in one place and have to be keyed into another. A spreadsheet sits between two applications because nothing else joins them up.
We build the connection, including the parts a ready made integration skips: matching records that do not share an identifier, handling the rows that fail, and keeping both sides consistent when one of them is briefly unavailable.
Removing a manual step
Someone spends a morning a week on something repetitive: reconciling payments, chasing approvals, generating the same report, moving files between folders and renaming them.
The value is rarely just the hours. It is that the task stops depending on one person remembering to do it, and stops breaking when they are on holiday.
Tools and systems
What we work with
Automation platforms
How systems talk
Systems we connect
Where it runs
What to expect
How a project runs
Watching the process as it really works
We sit with the people doing the job now. The documented version of a process and the actual one differ almost every time, and the difference is usually where the exceptions live.
Data mapping
Matching records across systems that were never designed to agree. Which field is authoritative, how a customer in one system is recognised as the same customer in another, and what to do with the duplicates already sitting there. This is normally the longest stage.
Deciding the business logic
What the automation does when an invoice has no matching order, when a field is blank, or when two systems disagree. These are your decisions rather than ours. We make sure they get made deliberately, because the alternative is that the code picks for you.
Build
The connections, the transformations, and the scheduling or triggering around them.
Error handling and retries
Network calls fail and third party APIs go down. We make the steps safe to repeat, so a retry cannot create a second invoice, and we decide what gets retried automatically against what stops and asks for a person.
Running alongside the manual process
For the first stretch the automation runs while the manual process continues, and the two are compared. It is the only reliable way to find the cases nobody mentioned.
Monitoring and alerting
Something has to tell you when a run fails, rather than the failure surfacing a fortnight later as a missing invoice. You get alerting on failures and a way to see what ran.
Handover
A written runbook covering what the automation does, where it runs, how to change a rule, and what to check first when something looks wrong.
Scope
When you should not hire us
- If Zapier or Make already connects your two systems and the volume is low, use them. They are cheaper than anything we would build and they will be running today.
- If the process is still changing every few weeks, automating it now means rebuilding it shortly afterwards. Wait until it has settled.
- We do not build robots that click through screens when an API exists. That approach breaks whenever the supplier changes their interface, and it usually breaks quietly.
Where enquiries usually go next
Related work
AI implementation and optimisation
When part of the process needs judgement rather than rules, such as classifying free text or pulling fields out of documents that are not consistently formatted.
See what this coversAPI integration and connectors
When the blocker is that a system has no usable integration and one has to be built against its API.
See what this covers