Operations & automation consultancy · United Kingdom
Every business runs on repeated work.
Most of it doesn’t need a person.
Provenance Operations finds the manual, repetitive processes inside small and medium businesses and replaces them with automated systems reliable enough to forget about. Built on your own accounts, with a human in control of every decision that matters.
What one manual process costs you a year
Move the sliders. The figure at the bottom is what that process costs you in salaried time every year.
Sec. 01 / The method
Trace it. Build it. Prove it.
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Step 01 · Trace
Follow the work
Understanding comes before automation. One process is traced from first trigger to finished output: every handoff, every re-keyed spreadsheet, every manual check that has quietly become someone’s job. You get a plain-English map of the process, what it costs, and whether it deserves to be automated at all.
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Step 02 · Build
Automate what repeats
The repetitive part of your process, once traced, gets rebuilt to run on accounts in your name. Anything new is set up under your login and your billing, so the system is yours from the day it goes live and keeps running whether or not I’m still involved.
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Step 03 · Prove
Prove it on the real work
Every system is tested on your own work, not on a demo: checked against jobs already completed, then run alongside the existing process until the output matches. Where a decision carries weight (money leaving, promises made, people affected) the system stops and a person signs it off. Machines do the repetition. You keep the judgement.
Sec. 01a / The work this removes
Eight jobs that turn up across most businesses, and what each one becomes once the system runs it. Every one keeps a person on the decisions that carry weight.
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T–01
Quotes rebuilt from scratch each time
Drafted from your own templates and prices, ready to approve before it sends
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T–02
Overdue invoices chased by hand
Tracked automatically, reminders sent on schedule, escalated to you when ignored
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T–03
Sign-offs chased over email
Requested and tracked automatically, the approver nudged until they respond
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T–04
The same details re-typed into each system by hand
Read once and written to all of them automatically
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T–05
Reports assembled by hand each time
Pulled from live data on a schedule, ready for you to check
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T–06
New-starter forms sent and re-keyed by hand
Issued, collected, and filed into each system for you
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T–07
Enquiries left to go cold
Logged and acknowledged at once, then followed up on a schedule until they reply
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T–08
Receipts and figures pulled together at month-end
Collected and reconciled through the month, ready to sign off
These are examples, not a menu. Your business will have its own way of working: maybe it’s quotes that have to be built before any work can start, or a report someone rebuilds every week that nobody wants to touch, or something entirely unique to you. Finding those, and working out what can be automated and how, is what the process audit does: the common processes and the bespoke, mapped for your company.
Sec. 02 / Working principles
Specifications behind every engagement.
- P–01 Built on your accounts
- Everything runs in tools you own and can open, inspect, and change. If the engagement ended tomorrow, every system would keep working, and you would keep every password.
- P–02 A human holds the pen
- Automation handles repetition. A person approves anything with consequences: payments, pricing, promises, people. That boundary is designed in from the start, not bolted on later.
- P–03 Boring technology, chosen deliberately
- Reliability beats novelty. Better a plain system that runs quietly for years than a clever one that needs a specialist to keep alive. AI meets the same test: used where it genuinely earns its place, left out where a plain rule does the job.
- P–04 Automation isn’t always the answer
- Some processes need a better checklist, not a robot. Some are better left with the person already doing them. You get the honest recommendation, including when it means less work for me.
- P–05 The price is fixed before work starts
- The fee is agreed in writing before any work begins, and it does not move. It is a fraction of what the audit shows you saving, never a day rate or a guess, so it exists only because the saving does. The larger part of that saving stays with you. If a process won’t clearly pay for itself, I tell you not to buy it.
Sec. 03 / The engagement
How working together actually runs.
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Stage 01
A conversation
45 minutes, no charge, no deck. You describe how the work flows and where it hurts. If it isn’t a good fit, I say so on the call and point you somewhere better.
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Stage 02
The process audit
A short diagnostic that sits inside the real work (the inboxes, the spreadsheets, the hand-offs between people) and produces a written map: what repeats, what it costs, and what is worth automating. The fee is fixed and agreed before it starts. The map is yours to keep, whatever you decide to do next.
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Stage 03
The build
The scope and the quote are fixed in writing up front, and the build runs on your accounts. Each part arrives as a working system you can open and use, the moment it is finished. Nothing goes live without your sign-off. If an audit came first, its fee comes off the build cost.
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Stage 04
A proper handover
Documentation a new hire could follow, a walkthrough with your team, and a running-in period of close support while the system beds in. The accounts, the access and the documentation are all yours. The handover has worked when your team runs it day to day without me in the room.
Sec. 04 / Questions
Things people rightly ask.
Who is this for?
Small and medium businesses in the UK, usually owner-run, where the work has quietly outgrown the way it is still being done by hand. Usually that looks like inboxes, spreadsheets, re-typing things from one place into another and someone remembering to chase what has not come back. If the same task gets done the same way every week, it is worth a conversation.
What does it cost?
It comes in two parts, both fixed and both agreed before work starts. A one-off setup fee, sized from what the process audit measures. Then a monthly fee covering monitoring, support and continued improvement as the business changes. You see both figures next to the annual saving the audit measured, on the same page, before you commit to anything. The audit itself is deliberately small and priced separately. If the numbers do not clearly pay for themselves, I tell you not to proceed.
How long does it take?
The audit is the short part, and you get its dates when you book it. The build depends on how many processes are in scope and how clean the starting point is, so it is quoted with a delivery date attached before any work begins. Work arrives in pieces as each one is finished, so the first working system lands well before the last.
Do you use AI?
Where it genuinely helps, such as reading documents or drafting routine messages for a person to review, yes. Where reliability matters more than cleverness, no. AI never gets the final word on a decision that matters; that is a design rule, not a preference.
What happens if something breaks?
Every system runs on your own accounts, so it keeps working whether or not I am reachable. Each one is built to tell you when it needs attention rather than let a problem sit hidden, so nothing runs wrong in the background for weeks, which is more than can be said for a person quietly forgetting a step. Most of the ongoing work is not repair anyway: it is keeping the system in step with a business that changes. Each one is documented well enough that it does not depend on my memory, and support is part of the monthly fee, not a favour.
Sec. 05 / About
Built by an engineer.
Run like one.
Provenance Operations is a one-person firm by design. I hold a master's degree in mechanical engineering, and that background brings a useful habit: nothing ships on a hunch. Everything is drawn, checked and approved, and you assume things will go wrong so you build so they cannot.
The same rigour runs through the operational work. I sit inside a business, find what repeats and replace it with systems a team can trust and inspect. Most automation sold to small firms is a subscription and a prayer. This is the opposite: something you own, on your accounts, that a person can open and understand.
An engineer is trained to see any working thing as a system: inputs, steps and the points where it strains under load. A business is no different. What looks like a mess is usually just a process nobody has drawn yet, and once it is on paper you can see where the work is going and what to do about it.
Sec. 06 / Contact
Get in touch.
Tell me what a normal week looks like and where the repetitive work piles up. If Provenance Operations can help, I will say how. If it cannot, I will say that too.
Email me directly
charlie@provenanceoperations