Studio Concept / 2026
The process that lived in a spreadsheet
A services business runs requests, quotes, approvals and supplier invoices through email threads and a shared spreadsheet. This concept shows how we would turn that into a workflow that moves on its own and asks a person only when a decision is needed.
Studio concept. A self-initiated scenario, not client work. There is no client and no results are claimed; it shows how we would approach the problem.
- Type
- Studio concept, no client
- Industry
- B2B services automation
- Services
- Product & UX design, Custom web applications, AI & automation, Cloud, DevOps & care
The situation
Picture a business-to-business services company of a few dozen people. Requests arrive through a web form, a shared inbox and the phone. Someone copies each one into a spreadsheet, a colleague prices it from an older quote, and a manager approves it by replying to an email. Supplier invoices arrive as PDFs and are typed into the accounting software by hand. Nothing is broken, exactly. But nobody can say which requests are waiting, for whom or for how long, and every step depends on someone remembering it.
Where we would focus
- Every request reaches the right person with what they need to reply, instead of waiting in a shared inbox
- Quotes start from the business’s own price rules and past work, not from a copied file
- Documents are read automatically, and a person checks only the fields the system is unsure of
- Approvals happen in one place, with a record of who decided what and when
- Managers see what is waiting, and on whom, without asking around
How we would approach it
- 01
Discover
Follow a handful of real requests from the first message to the paid invoice, and note every copy, paste and reminder on the way. Write down the rules people apply without thinking: who prices what, which amounts need a manager, which customers get different terms.
- 02
Design
Design the workflow around decisions rather than screens: what the system may do on its own, what a person must confirm, and what happens when nobody responds. Prototype the review queue and the approval step with the people who will use them every day.
- 03
Engineer
Build a workflow service that receives requests and documents, routes them by those rules and keeps the full history of every step. Document reading uses an AI model that reports how confident it is; anything below a set threshold goes to the review queue instead of straight through. The CRM and accounting software stay in place and are connected, not replaced.
- 04
Launch & evolve
Start with one kind of request and run it alongside the spreadsheet. Widen the automation only where the review queue shows the system is consistently right, and keep a person in the loop wherever it is not.
The system
Requests from the web form and the shared inbox go to intake and routing, which drafts quotes for approval. Documents are read by an AI model: confident fields go straight to approval, uncertain ones to a review queue checked by a person. Approved work is recorded in the CRM and accounting software, and every decision is written to an audit log.
Read the diagram as text
- Web form → Intake & routing: requests
- Shared inbox → Intake & routing
- Documents → Document reading
- Intake & routing → Quote draft: priced by rules
- Document reading → Approval: confident
- Document reading → Review queue: unsure
- Quote draft → Approval
- Review queue → Approval: corrected
- Quote draft → CRM: deal
- Approval → Accounting: approved
- Approval → Audit log: who and when
What we would measure
A concept has no results to report. These are the numbers we would track from the first day.
- Time from a new request to the first reply
- Time spent preparing a quote
- Share of documents that still need a person to check them
- Decisions waiting on someone, and for how long
- Errors found after an invoice has gone out