What we doThe Mansions · Operations consulting

Operations & process optimization.

We map how the work in your business actually gets done and put a number on the time and money slipping away, then build what fixes it.

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  1. 01Process mapping
  2. 02Waste and cost
  3. 03Tools and spend
  4. 04Cleaner hand-offs
  5. 05The fix

What operations consulting actually does

For a business owner, operations consulting means someone follows the work through your business, step by step, and shows you where the hours and the money slip away. You'll also see it sold as business process improvement consulting or process optimization consulting. We look at three things, and then we fix what we find with what we build.

  1. The people

    First, the people. We look at who does each part of the work, and how much of it keeps landing on one person, which is often the owner.

  2. The steps

    Then the steps, in the order the work really moves. We watch where it sits waiting, and where it goes back to someone who already did their part.

  3. The tools

    And then the tools. We check which ones talk to each other, and which ones you're paying for while nobody opens them.

Most of the waste we find hides in the gaps between those three, like the detail typed twice and the hand-off nobody owns.

What we do, from the first map to the fix

  1. 01Process mapping
  2. 02Waste and cost
  3. 03Tools and spend
  4. 04Cleaner hand-offs
  5. 05The fix

Every business runs a little differently, but we always look at the work through the same five stations. At each one, part of the work is ours and part of it should always stay with your people. The map starts with our free consultation, and the fix at the end is what you hire us for.

Station 01 · Process mapping

Ask five people how a job gets done in your business and you'll often hear five slightly different answers.

So when we do business process mapping, we sit with the people doing the work and follow real jobs through the business, from the first enquiry to the last invoice. Every step goes on the map, with who does it, which tool it's done in, how long it takes and where it waits.

Stays with your team

What the work really looks like day to day, and the last word on whether the map is right.

Station 02 · Waste and cost

Once the work is on a map, the waste starts to show. It's the detail typed twice, the job sitting in someone's inbox, the work redone because the brief was missing a line, and sometimes money going out twice.

We count each one from your own records and from the people who do the work, then price it in hours and in money. Those prices tell you which problem to fix first.

Stays with your team

Your numbers, and the call on which costs matter most.

Station 03 · Tools and spend

A lot of businesses pick up their tools one problem at a time, and a few years later nobody is quite sure what they're all for.

We list every tool and subscription you pay for and check each one against the map, looking at who opens it, for what, and which other tool already does the same job. The ones nobody touches show up quickly, and so do the places where someone carries the same information from one tool to the next by hand.

Stays with your team

Which tools stay and which get cancelled, and every conversation with a vendor.

Station 04 · Cleaner hand-offs

Work changes hands all day long. A sale turns into a project, a draft goes to the client for a yes, and a finished job goes off to be invoiced. Each of those is a place where something can slip through.

We look at every place the work passes from one person, team or tool to the next, what goes missing on the way and how long it waits there. Then we work out what each hand-off needs, so the brief, the files and the client's details travel with the work.

And in many of the businesses we've mapped, the busiest hand-off of all is the owner, because so much has to pass through them first.

Stays with your team

The conversations at a hand-off that need a person, like the kickoff call with a new client.

Station 05 · The fix

A map is only worth something once the problems on it get fixed. Every fix in the plan comes with a price and a place in the order, starting where it gives back soonest.

Then we build the fixes. That might be automation where work still moves by hand, or custom software where you need a tool of your own.

It might be your data in one place where it's spread across spreadsheets and inboxes, or an AI product where the job calls for one.

The plan is yours, so you can also build it yourselves or with someone else.

Stays with your team

The call on which fixes come first, and how your team works once they're in.

What our maps have found

Every one of these is a real business we mapped. The names are left out, and the numbers come from our own records.

Found

Twelve workflows, mapped and priced

A digital marketing agency

We interviewed eight people on the team and mapped 12 of the agency's workflows. Across those workflows, we found 772 hours a month going into manual work, priced at $330,000 a year of potential.

772 hours a month

Found

The same invoice, paid twice

An earthmoving firm

We mapped six of the firm's processes, and in one of them, the list of supplier payments was read through by hand every week. That's where we found the same invoice being paid twice, three or four times in the last year, and the last one was €5,000.

€5,000

Found

Three tools doing one job

A Canadian branding agency

The agency was paying for more than 50 tools, and the work we mapped ran through about 25 to 30 of them. Planning who works on what started in a spreadsheet, moved to a capacity tool and was then typed again into the project tool. Across the agency, the consultation found $165,828 a year of waste, from hunting for information to typing the same data into more than one tool.

$165,828

Found

One client's details, typed three times

A Canadian PR agency

Every new client's details were typed by hand into three separate tools, and a signed contract set nothing else in motion. Getting a client fully set up could take up to two weeks. We mapped onboarding, invoicing and approvals, and found $30,264 a year of the founder's time going into admin like that.

$30,264

Read the PR agency case

Found

Every hand-off, by email

An outdoor-advertising group

Every hand-off ran through email, from the client's artwork to the designers and on to the people doing the installs. The artwork files were so heavy that the team switched email accounts every six months. We mapped the work from artwork to installation to the photo report, and found 15% of the senior sales team's time going into building those photo reports by hand.

15%

Found

Five fixes, publishing first

A South African social media agency

The same post had to go out four separate times, once for every platform, and scheduling alone took an hour and a half a day. Across the month, we found 34 to 42% of the agency's capacity going into manual work like that. We proposed five fixes for that manual work, starting with publishing, and the whole plan's projected payback was 42 to 49 days.

42 to 49 daysprojected payback

Read the social agency case

How we work

It always starts with our free consultation. From there, you decide what to fix first, and we build it. Once it's live, we stay on it and keep improving it.

See how the free consultation works

What you own, and what drives the cost

You own all of it

  • Your data, tools and builds. What we build is yours, so nothing stops working if we stop working together.

  • Your operations. Your people keep running them.

What drives the cost

We don't publish prices, because every business is wired differently. Four things move the cost of a fix:

  • The processes. How many of them the fix touches.

  • The hand-offs. How many people, teams and tools the work passes between.

  • Your records. How much of the work is already written down, or kept somewhere we can build from.

  • Your tools. How many tools and subscriptions you pay for, since we check each one against the map.

Then there's what it costs to run, like software subscriptions and the AI usage a fix needs each month. The report prices every fix, to build and to run, next to what it gives back in hours or money, with the working shown.

Two ways to work with us

  1. Project by project.

    You pick a fix from the report, we build it, and you pay for that project.

  2. An AI subscription.

    Monthly access to the whole team, building one solution at a time until it's all built.

Is operations consulting what you need?

Not every problem in a business needs operations consulting. Find the line that sounds most like you, and you'll see what you actually need.

If this sounds like youWhat you need
The work gets done, but nobody can say exactly where the hours and the money go.
Someone to map how the work really runs, put a number on what it's costing you and fix it with what they build. That's what we do.
You want someone to write your processes from scratch, or a manual for how the business should run.
A technical writer, or an operations manager of your own. We don't write processes from scratch. We map the work you already do and fix where it loses time and money.
You need someone to run your operations week to week.
A part-time operations lead, like a fractional COO. We don't run your operations. We find what's costing you and fix it, and your team keeps running the business.
You need an operations audit for compliance, risk or your accounts.
An internal auditor, or your accountant. We look for the time and money the work loses, and compliance stays with them.

And if you book a free consultation and we're not the right fit, we'll tell you on the call, and you'll still leave with pointers to get organised and move forward.

Frequently asked questions

The free consultation is where everything on this page starts. The paid part is the fixing, when we build what the plan calls for through our other services, like automation or custom software.

An operations consultant works out how the work in a business really gets done and where it loses time and money, then helps fix it. We do it in the five stations on this page, from the first map to the fix, and when a fix needs building, we build it ourselves. If you're comparing operations consulting firms, ask each one what happens after the map, and who owns whatever gets built.

Strategy consulting decides where the business should go. Operations consulting looks at the everyday work that has to get it there, and where that work loses time and money. We do the second, and where the business goes stays your call.

It is when the problem costs you more than the fix does. Most of the findings on this page come from small firms, like the $30,264 a year of founder time we found at a PR agency. And you can start with the one fix that gives back soonest and pay for that project alone.

The tool matters a lot less than who you ask. A good map starts with the people who do the work and follows real jobs through the business, from the first enquiry to the last invoice. If you want to try it tomorrow, take one job you finished last week and write down every step, who did it, which tool it sat in and where it waited. And if AI is on your mind, our guide explains why written-down processes matter before AI.

No. We work from the records you already keep and from the people who do the work. When we have to estimate a number, we mark it as an assumption and show the working. Close enough to choose which problem to fix first is all it takes.

  1. 01Process mapping
  2. 02Waste and cost
  3. 03Tools and spend
  4. 04Cleaner hand-offs
  5. 05The fix

So what's quietly costing your business money right now?

Book a free consultationTake the free AI readiness quiz