Someone is the human glue
There's a person on your team whose actual job is copying data from one system into another. Maybe it's a spreadsheet to your CRM. Maybe it's invoices from email to QuickBooks. Their job is the integration nobody bought.
The repetitive work,
doing itself.
The hours your team loses every week to copy-paste, spreadsheet shuffling, and form-filling — that's where AI earns its keep first. We automate the workflows that are eating your operation, ship the working version in days, and hand it back so your team gets the upside.
02 / Signals
Five signs you
need this service.
If two or more of these are happening in your operation right now, Workflow Automation is the highest-leverage place we can start. None of them are esoteric. All of them have shipped, paid-back solutions.
Quote prep takes hours
Every new opportunity costs you 90 minutes (or 4) of someone pulling data, looking up history, building a doc, sending it. The pipeline is throttled by the quote.
Reporting is a Monday ritual
Your weekly numbers exist in three places. Someone spends Monday morning reconciling them, formatting them, emailing them. By Tuesday the numbers are already stale.
Scheduling eats the day
You're playing tag with customers over appointments, deliveries, service windows. Every back-and-forth is friction that scares off the people who'd otherwise buy.
Onboarding is a folder of PDFs
New hires (or new clients) get a folder, a doc, and a 90-minute Zoom. By month two they've forgotten the parts that matter and they're asking the same questions you taught last cohort.
03 / What we ship
Six shapes we
ship most often.
Every workflow is its own snowflake — but they cluster into shapes. Below are the six we build most weeks. Your version will be tailored, but you'll recognize the pattern.
/01
Quote Engine
Drops the prep time on every new opportunity by 80–95%. Pulls customer history, applies your pricing rules, drafts the language in your voice, hands you a quote-ready doc — usually inside 60 seconds.
An example
Highlands Ranch property mgmt firm cut quote prep from 12 hrs/wk to <90 min, freeing one FTE for higher-value work.
Typical inputs
- Your existing quotes / proposals
- Pricing rules + discount logic
- CRM data (any system)
- Brand voice samples
- Web app or internal tool
- Embedded in your CRM
- Slack / Teams trigger
- Email-to-quote workflow
/02
Billing & Invoicing Automation
Closes the loop from work-done to invoice-paid. Pulls hours, materials, line items. Drafts the invoice in your format. Routes it for review or sends it. Then chases it until it's paid.
An example
Accounting firm replaced a 6-day month-end close with a 36-hour AI-assisted reconciliation workflow. 9-person team, no new hires.
Typical inputs
- Time-tracking data
- Project / job records
- Customer + payment terms
- Approval logic (if any)
- Workflow in your accounting tool
- Stripe / QuickBooks integration
- Approval queue in Slack
- Auto-followup sequences
/03
Reporting & KPI Roll-up
Pulls numbers from the three (or six) systems where they live, reconciles them, narrates the variance in plain English. Lands in your inbox before Monday at 7am. No human reconciliation step.
An example
Manufacturing client replaced a Monday-morning 90-min reporting meeting with an automated digest delivered at 6:30am. Recovered ~6 leadership hours per week.
Typical inputs
- KPI definitions (what counts)
- Source systems (CRM, accounting, ops)
- Cadence (daily / weekly / monthly)
- Distribution list
- Scheduled email digest
- Slack channel digest
- Live dashboard (see Dashboards service)
- PDF / print export
/04
Customer Communication Workflows
Auto-drafted replies in your voice — for routine email, status updates, FAQ-shaped questions. Reviewed by a human until trust is calibrated, then auto-sent for the low-risk categories. Always escalates the unusual.
An example
Real estate brokerage reclaimed 5 hours per agent per week on routine tenant + buyer comms while keeping their voice consistent.
Typical inputs
- Past emails (10–100 examples)
- Tone / voice samples
- Escalation rules
- Templates (if any exist)
- Gmail / Outlook draft assistant
- Auto-reply for tagged categories
- Slack approve-and-send queue
- Mobile escalation alerts
/05
Scheduling & Booking Automation
Replaces the email tag. Customer or prospect picks a slot, your team approves (or not), confirmation goes out, calendar updates, reminders send. Handles the awkward 'is this even doable?' check before involving you.
An example
Services business eliminated ~12 hrs/wk of back-and-forth across the team by auto-screening + booking 70% of inbound requests directly.
Typical inputs
- Calendar (Google / Outlook)
- Service or appointment types
- Availability rules
- Reminder cadence
- Public booking page
- Embedded widget on your site
- SMS confirmation flow
- CRM auto-update
/06
Onboarding & SOP Automation
Turns your existing process docs into living, interactive workflows. New hires get walked through them. Clients get the right one at the right step. The system updates the doc when reality drifts.
An example
Property mgmt firm cut new-property onboarding from 9 days to 2, while reducing missed-step errors by 80%.
Typical inputs
- Existing process docs (any format)
- Who does what / role mapping
- Checkpoints + handoffs
- Existing checklist tools
- Interactive web workflow
- Notion / Confluence integration
- Slack-driven checklist
- Auto-followup nudges
04 / How it works
The five stages,
shaped for Workflow Automation.
Every Sling engagement runs through the same five stages — Assess, Design, Build, Train, Optimize. Here's what that looks like specifically for Workflow Automation. See the full Framework →
Map the workflow
Half-day shadow with the people doing the work. We watch the actual process — not the documented one. Output: a workflow diagram + Opportunity Report.
Architect the automation
Pick the tool. Define the trust boundaries. Decide what's auto vs. human-in-the-loop. Output: Solution Spec + working prototype of the riskiest step.
Ship the working version
Weekly builds, deployed in your environment. By end of week one, your team is using a usable v0.5. By end of stage, it's v1.0 in production.
Hand it back
Train the operators. Document the failure modes. Identify your in-house Champion. Run live sessions until everyone has used it on real work.
Tune monthly
Optional AaaS retainer. We watch the system, tune prompts and rules, surface improvement opportunities. Most clients graduate within 6–12 months.
05 / Toolbox
What we typically reach for
on this service.
Anthropic-first, tool-flexible. We pick what fits your data, your stack, and your team's appetite for new platforms. Nothing here is locked in — if you've already standardized on something else, we work with it.
Primary
Claude (Anthropic)
The model that runs the smart steps — extraction, drafting, classification, decisioning.
Primary
Claude Code
Where we build the workflow itself. Custom scripts, integrations, the glue.
Orchestration
n8n · Zapier · Make
When the workflow is mostly drag-and-drop logic with one AI step in the middle.
Integrations
Your stack
Whatever you're already on — QuickBooks, HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Notion, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365.
Vision
Claude Vision
When the workflow involves reading documents, invoices, IDs, forms, photos.
Hosting
Vercel · Cloudflare · AWS
Where the workflow lives. We pick based on your data residency and existing footprint.
06 / Proof
One shipped example.
A representative engagement. Anonymized industry tag, real-shape metrics. The full case-study library lives at /case-studies.
80 hrs / mo
Cut quote prep from 12 hrs/week to under 90 minutes — equivalent to a full-time hire, without the hire.
The shape
- Assess: half-day shadow with the leasing team, mapped 23 quote prep steps to 6 core moves.
- Design: Claude-powered quote engine, pulling from existing CRM + price list. Human approval gate on every quote.
- Build: shipped v0.5 on day 7. v1.0 in production day 10. Code in their repo.
- Train: 4 hours total. Champion identified on the leasing team.
- Optimize: monthly tune-ups via AaaS Standard. Auto-approval threshold raised after 90 days.
07 / Pricing
Published. Honest.
Quoted in 48 hours.
We publish the range so you can scope before the call. The actual number lands inside that range — we quote it after Discovery, fixed-bid for Projects and MVP Sprints, hourly via AaaS for ongoing.
$2K – $5K
- Working tool in production
- Source code in your repo
- 1 round of revisions
- Best fit when you already know the shape
$10K – $30K
- Full Assess → Train cycle
- Multiple workflows or a deeper single one
- 30-day post-launch support
- Most common shape for this service
$500 – $5K / mo
- Lite / Standard / Pro tiers
- Use the hours for tuning, T&M, or advisory
- Picks up where Build ends
- Pause anytime
08 / FAQ
Common questions
about this service.
What buyers actually ask on Discovery Calls about Workflow Automation. If yours isn't here, we'll answer it on the call.
Then we'll tell you. Sometimes the right answer is a documented SOP, a Zapier flow, or just picking the right off-the-shelf tool. That's why Foundations exists as its own service — sometimes you need the pre-AI work first. We've ended Foundations engagements with 'you're set, you don't need us anymore.' That's a fine outcome.
09 / Next stepShow us the
Show us the
workflow that's
eating your week.
Bring the most painful, repetitive thing your team does. We'll spend 30 minutes on it. If Workflow Automation fits, you'll get a scoped quote in 48 hours. If something else is a better fit (Agents, an App, just better SOPs), we'll say that too.
What this call is
30 min. We learn your operation, scope the work, tell you straight whether Workflow Automation fits.
What you'll leave with
A scoped quote within 48 hours, or an honest "this isn't us" and a referral to a better fit.
Other services
If your workflow needs conversation, see AI Agents. If it needs a real UI, see Custom Applications. Most engagements combine.