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For owners, operations people and CTOs who want to hand boring work to software. Customer emails, orders or invoices, for example. The worksheet takes 30 minutes, before your first conversation with a vendor.
Since 2023 we have delivered 15+ production projects. We run agents and automations for clients and in our own company.
1. An agent, an automation, or nothing?
Most companies that want an AI agent need an automation. An agent makes sense where free text has to be read and decisions made within limits.
| Assistant | Automation | Agent | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who decides | A human at every step | A rule, a human for exceptions | The agent, within limits |
| Example | A draft text in an AI chat | An invoice from email into accounting | A reply to a customer's question about an order |
| What you need | An account | A described process and examples | Process, examples, rules and who takes the exceptions |
| Worst mistake | A bad text in one document | The mistake repeats until someone stops it | The agent tells a customer something wrong in your name |
An agent only works with an automation underneath. Without one it has nothing to read from.
2. When not to build an agent
If even one of these applies, start somewhere else.
Sometimes the best answer is to tidy a spreadsheet, or to do nothing. That's a result too.
3. Choosing the first process: a worksheet
Write down 2 or 3 candidates. Give one point for every "yes".
| Question | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Does it happen every day? | |||
| Does the input have a similar shape (email, invoice, order)? | |||
| Do you have examples of correct replies or results? | |||
| Can you name the exceptions and who gets them? | |||
| Can a mistake be fixed before the customer sees it? | |||
| Will the saved time go to sales or to customers? | |||
| Total (out of 6) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Start with the highest score. On a tie, pick the one where a mistake is cheaper.
Three questions we ask before every project: Will it make money? Will it save money? Will it save time, for whom, and what will that person do with it? If you can't answer any of them, you don't need an agent yet.
4. The 30-day plan
Day 0: measure today
Without a baseline you won't know whether the agent helped. Time 10 typical cases with a stopwatch. How long one takes, who does it, how many there are each week.
Week 1: understand the work
Week 2: the agent drafts, a human approves
Week 3: measure and fix
Week 4: decide
| What you see | Decision |
|---|---|
| You approve most drafts without changes and approving has become boring | Let this type run on its own. Everything else still goes through a human. |
| You correct often, but less than in week 2 | Another month in draft mode. Keep fixing the material. |
| You correct more than the agent saved | Stop. Go back to choosing the process, or to an automation. |
5. What to measure
| Number | How to get it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Time per case | Stopwatch on 10 cases, before and after | The main proof that it helps |
| Share of drafts approved unchanged | Approved / all drafts | Tells you when to let a type run on its own |
| Share of cases handed to a human | Escalations / all cases | Too low is suspicious, not good |
| Mistakes the customer saw | Write down every one | The only number that has to be zero |
| Time spent approving | Estimate from the person who approves | If it's higher than the saving, something is wrong |
6. What it looks like in practice
A client with an online shop: customer support. A reply to a customer used to take hours; today it arrives within 5 minutes. Support now handles only the complex cases. The first version, though, answered like a marketing flyer. What helped was rewriting the material in the founders' words and one rule: "when you don't know, hand it to a human".
Our own accounting: invoices. No agent, just automation. One invoice took 10 to 15 minutes; today it takes under a minute. 70 % go through without a human. The rest goes through a human on purpose: scans, new suppliers, several VAT rates.