Do we have to replace our systems?

Usually not, and we'll say so early. Integration between what you already run is nearly always cheaper, faster and less disruptive than replacement. We take no commissions from any platform, so recommending a replacement earns us nothing extra.

How do you know what to automate first?

Impact, not ease. We look at how often something happens, how long it takes, what it costs when it goes wrong, and how exposed it is to one person being away. Sometimes the answer is a small annoyance that happens two hundred times a week.

What if the process shouldn't exist at all?

That happens more than you'd think, and it's the cheapest possible outcome. Some steps survive only because of a constraint that disappeared years ago. We'd rather delete a process than automate it.

Will our team actually use it?

They will if it's faster than what they were doing, and they won't if it isn't. That's why we map the real process including the workarounds — people build workarounds for reasons, and automating around those reasons is how this fails.

AliveCommerce / Capabilities / Reduce manual work

Reduce manual work

Somebody in your business is the integration. They take data out of one system, reshape it, and put it into another, several times a day, and have done for years. That work is invisible until they're off sick.

Does this sound like you?

Tick what applies. The count changes what we'd recommend, and sometimes the recommendation is to do nothing yet.

What's actually causing it.

Almost never carelessness. Usually the predictable result of a decision that made sense at the time.

The systems were bought separately

Each was chosen to solve one department's problem, by different people, in different years. None was selected on how well it would talk to the others, because at the time there was nothing to talk to.

The gap got filled by a person

When two systems don't connect, someone bridges them manually. It works, so nobody escalates it. Over years that becomes a full-time role nobody ever budgeted for.

Nobody owns the space between

Your MSP owns infrastructure. Each vendor owns their product. The handoffs between systems belong to no one, so they're never anyone's improvement project.

What we do about it.

In this order, because doing them out of order is how these projects fail.

Map what actually happens

Not the documented process — the real one, including the workarounds and the reasons behind them. Usually the first honest picture anyone has had of it.

Automate the handoffs first

Integration between existing systems is almost always cheaper and less disruptive than replacing anything. We start there and only discuss replacement if it genuinely earns it.

Rebuild the process, not just the tooling

Automating a bad process makes it faster and no better. Some steps exist only because of a limitation that no longer applies, and those get removed rather than automated.

Leave it documented and owned

The system is only half of it. Your team needs to understand what runs, what breaks, and what to do about it — whether we stay involved or not.

Typical first phase

4 to 10 weeks

One process, mapped and automated end to end

What it usually costs

Published ranges

See the cost guide before you call us

Most common trigger

Someone left

Or is about to, and took the process with them

Which way in.

Same team either way. The difference is whether this has an ending.

A defined project

AliveCommerce

One process or a defined set of them, scoped and priced up front. Fixed Budget, Scope Controlled — when discovery turns up something unexpected, it reshapes the release, not the invoice.

What we build

Continuous ownership

Champion1 Foundation

When the answer isn't one process but a steady stream of them. We own the software layer and keep finding the next thing worth automating, under one fixed monthly fee.

See Foundation

What it looks like in practice.

Distribution · 80 staff · 14 months

A twelve-year-old ERP nobody could safely touch

Three exports and a nightly spreadsheet held order flow together. We mapped the real process, replaced the seams with integrations, and left the ERP exactly where it was.

31 hrs

returned per week

Straight answers.

Related.

These tend to travel together.

Connect systems that don't talk“An export, an import, and a spreadsheet in between.”Get off paper“Filing cabinets, carbon forms, binders on the shop floor.”Take software off my plate“Nobody owns the stack. Everyone owns a piece of it.”

Tell us what's breaking.

We'll tell you which part of this we'd put on it, roughly what it costs, and whether it's worth doing at all — including when the honest answer is that you don't need us.

Start the Conversation

Knowledge and process

Applications and data

Customer and web

Browse by symptom instead

The structure

Continuous ownership

Before you commit

Start with one problem

Priority sectors

Also

Or by situation

Not sure you fit?

Reading

Most read

Proof

Nobody owns the application layer