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07 — Processes

Fourteen steps.Seven only pass things along.

At CoderConda process automation starts with a two-to-three-day survey for €495 with a fixed end; after it every step of your process gets exactly one verdict. How many steps there are, nobody knows beforehand. Half of them fall away, and nothing replaces them.

7/14fall away, unreplaced
1step with a person in it
2–3days of shadowing

The shadowing costs €495 and has a fixed end.

Process 001 · order intake14 steps

  • gone7
  • machine6
  • person1
  • new1

Left8

14 · Falls away: 7, The machine does it: 6, A person stays: 1, Gets added: 1 · Left: 8

02 — The verdicts

01 — Falls away7

Half of it is handing over.It does not get automated.

Forwarding, entering, reporting back, going through it in the weekly: steps that produce nothing and only make sure somebody else knows. They disappear the moment the case itself has a state. Automated waste would still be waste.

  • 02Forward it to whoever owns it
  • 07Enter it in the Excel list
  • 08Forward it for review
  • 10Report the approval back
  • 12File a copy in the folder
  • 13Set a follow-up in the calendar
  • 14Go through the status in the weekly

No step is cut without something taking over its job.

02 — The machine does it6

Six steps are code.Not one of them is a decision.

Reading, looking up, calculating, writing, sending. These are the steps where two people would produce the same result given the same data. Amounts and deadlines are calculated by code, not by a language model: a model reads and matches, it does not do arithmetic.

  • 01Read the mail in the shared inbox
  • 03Look the customer up
  • 04Retype the line items from the PDF
  • 05Look the prices up
  • 06Write the quote in the template
  • 11Export as a PDF and send it

Built against your cases from last quarter, not against sample data.

03 — A person stays1

One step stays.It is the only one that leaves the building.

Whatever your customer gets to see, a person sees first: the quote, the invoice, the commitment. Not three approvals and not none, but one, with everything the system knows in view. Cutting this step would be the one cut that gets expensive.

  • 09Check it and approve

You set where the line runs, not the model.

04 — Gets added1

One step gets added.Nobody had that one before.

After the rebuild every case can be read back: what came in, what was decided, by whom and when. That did not exist before, because across fourteen handovers there was nowhere to put it. It is the only step that adds work, and the only one an auditor asks for.

  • 15Audit trail: what came in, who decided, when

A process that stalls silently is worse than none.

Verdict 1 of 4

Process 001 · order intake14 steps

Left8

14 · Falls away: 7, The machine does it: 6, A person stays: 1, Gets added: 1 · Left: 8

03 — The control

Some detours are a control.And that has to stay.

After four verdicts the obvious move is to cut as much as possible. That is exactly where rebuilds fail: the step that looks most redundant is sometimes the only place where anyone notices that something is stuck.

14Go through the status in the weekly

Looks like
Half an hour of reading out what everybody knows anyway.
Actually is
The only place where it comes out that a case has been sitting for nine days.
Taken over by
Every case has a deadline. Whatever misses it is on a list before anyone asks.

The rule

Every cut step has to name what takes over its job. The motion goes, the control does not.

That is why I watch instead of asking: this control is in no diagram, and nobody mentions it unprompted.

04 — The evidence

Days became minutes.On a process that ran every day.

A proposal used to be made by hand: find the template, gather the text, format it, check it. The same routine every time, and every time slightly different. After the rebuild it takes about three minutes.

Less copy and paste between shop, ERP and CRM0:56 · EN

Spoken in English · subtitles in English

BeforeBy hand, expertise tied to formatting.

Proposals in about 3 minutes

KI-Exposé-GeneratorStaffing company2026

What it does not prove

It is a corporate process, not a small trade business. What it proves is the collapsed turnaround, not the size of the company.

The case study

05 — The price

First it gets counted.Then it gets calculated.

What a rebuild costs depends on the number of steps, and nobody knows that number beforehand. So here are two things in sequence: a shadowing for €495 with a fixed end, and after it a quote with a figure instead of a range. All prices are final prices. No VAT is charged under § 19 UStG.

2–3days of shadowing
2–8weeks of rebuild
14steps, counted

Before the shadowing

a range

Rebuild2–8 weeks

The shadowing

2–3 days

After the shadowing

a figure

Rebuildfrom the counted list

The shadowing
Two to three days, €495, fixed end. It can be booked on its own and commits you to nothing after it.
The result
The counted list of your steps, each with a verdict. It is yours, even if I build nothing.
The quote
Comes after the shadowing and names a figure. Before it, any figure would be a guess, and guesses do not belong in one.
The person
Damjan Savić. I watch, I build, I hand over. No team in between.

06 — The handover

Four things arrive.Three go dark.

A rebuild is only finished when the old way is off. If it keeps running, two processes run side by side, and the second one always wins: it is the one people know. So this list has both halves on it.

  • The code, built with standard toolsArrives
  • The documentation, in the language of the businessArrives
  • Every access, on your own accountsArrives
  • One person in-house who can operate itArrives
  • The Excel list with the statusGoes dark
  • The folder with the filed copiesGoes dark
  • The forwarding rule in the inboxGoes dark

It does not have to be the whole process.

If you already know which part it is, the shadowing does not have to cover the whole process. And if you want the customer to see the status themselves, you need something other than automation.

07 — The objections

Four things that come up.The first half of each answer concedes.

Every one of these has been said to me, and every one has a true core. That comes first here, and only then what I hold against it.

  • “Our process is too specific.”

    It probably is.

    That is exactly why it gets shadowed instead of taken from a template. Specific is an argument against off-the-shelf software, not against a process that gets built.

    • Observed, not assumed
    • No template
  • “We do not have three days for this.”

    You are not giving up three days either.

    I watch while the work happens. Your effort is one conversation at the start and one at the end; in between the business runs as usual.

    • Two conversations
    • No workshop
    • Business keeps running
  • “But there are finished tools for this.”

    There are, and sometimes they are enough.

    They cost per seat and forever, and they fit the normal case. What keeps running beside them afterwards is the special case, and that was the expensive part.

    • Per seat, forever
    • Fits the normal case
  • “In the end two processes run in parallel.”

    That happens often, and it is the normal outcome.

    That is why switching off is its own item with a date, not a sentence at the end. What goes dark is on the same list as what arrives.

    • Switch-off with a date
    • On the same list
The long answersFour things that come up.
01

This comes up almost every time, and it is almost always true. Processes that have grown over ten years have special cases nobody can justify any more, and money still depends on them. That is why this work starts with watching and not with a workshop: in a workshop you describe the process you think you have. Watching shows you the one you have. The difference between the two is exactly the amount that rollouts fail on.

Observed, not assumedNo template
02

Shadowing is not an appointment somebody has to clear time for. I sit beside the work while it happens anyway and count along: clicks, waiting time, questions back, special cases. Your effort is one conversation beforehand, so I know where to look, and one afterwards, where the counted list gets walked through. Booking a workshop instead ties up several people for a day and produces the version of the process everybody remembers.

Two conversationsNo workshopBusiness keeps running
03

The usual course is not that the software is bad. On day one the demo looks good, because the demo tenant has no special cases in it. In week three the rollout stalls on the first one, and that keeps being done by hand for now. In month four there is an Excel file next to the new system again. In year two the license runs, the old process runs beside it, and both get paid for. A built process has the disadvantage that somebody has to build it, and the advantage that it fits the special cases that were counted first.

Per seat, foreverFits the normal case
04

A process people know beats one they have to learn, every single time. If the old Excel file stays reachable, it gets used, starting with whoever is in a hurry. That is why switching off belongs on the same list as the handover and gets a date: the forwarding rule in the inbox, the folder of copies, the status list. If one of those three stays open, the rebuild is not finished, only built.

Switch-off with a dateOn the same list

08 — Appointment

A look at your company.Talk it through with me.

Pick a time that suits you straight from the calendar. I go through with you where your company stands and what is worth doing. No obligation and no sales pressure.

15 minutesno obligationwith the founder
Damjan SavićFirst call · 15 minutes · video
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