The workflow that runs on email
A process that only moves when somebody remembers to move it.
Approvals, hand-offs and requests that live in inboxes and spreadsheets, rebuilt as a workflow that routes, escalates and records itself. What it costs you today, what the rebuilt version does, and what the first release looks like.
You will recognise at least three of these.
- A request arrives by email, and someone re-types it into a spreadsheet or a form.
- It moves to the next person because that person was cc'd, not because a system routed it.
- Approval means a reply saying "looks good" — which is also the only audit trail.
- When something stalls, nobody finds out until the person waiting escalates.
- The status of any given item lives in one person's head, and they are on holiday.
Signals it is costing more than anyone has measured.
- Someone's actual job is chasing other people for responses.
- You can't answer "how many are in flight right now?" without asking around.
- The same exception gets handled differently depending on who catches it.
- Onboarding a new person takes months because the process is oral history.
- An audit means reconstructing what happened from mailboxes.
What it becomes.
The work becomes an object rather than a thread. A request enters once — from a form, an email, an API or a scan — and the system decides where it goes, who owns it, and what has to be true before it moves on. Rules that used to be tribal knowledge become explicit: this value over that threshold needs a second approver, this vendor is blocked, this type of request skips two steps. Nothing waits on somebody remembering, because the queue chases people instead of the other way around, and every state change is recorded as it happens rather than reconstructed afterwards. Where judgment is genuinely required, a human still makes the call — the system just makes sure the call gets made, by the right person, with the context already assembled.
What the system does
- One intake for every channel — form, email, API, upload or scan
- Rules-based routing, with thresholds and delegation you can change without a developer
- Automatic escalation and reminders when something sits too long
- A complete audit trail — who did what, when, and on what information
- Live queue and cycle-time visibility for the people running the function
What it connects to
- Your existing email and calendar, so nobody has to change how they're notified
- The ERP, CRM or finance system that holds the master record
- Identity and SSO, so approvals are attributable to real people
- Downstream systems that need to know the outcome — billing, dispatch, payroll
It augments the systems of record you already run. Nobody is asking you to replace your accounting package.
Where we would start, and how long it takes.
One process, end to end, live for one team in about a week: intake, routing, approvals, escalation and a queue view. We deliberately do not try to model every exception in the first release — we ship the 80% path, watch a fortnight of real traffic, and build the exceptions that actually occurred rather than the ones people remembered.
It's the shape underneath ZeroFi: a job described in plain language is classified, matched to the right vetted contractor and put in front of them with the follow-up already queued — the same routing problem a work order, a purchase requisition or an HR request has.
See our platforms →Others in operations
The spreadsheet three people quietly depend on
“It was a spreadsheet. Now it's load-bearing, and it has no owner.”
Trackers & registersThe tracker nobody updates until something lapses
“You find out the certificate expired when the claim gets denied.”
Document capture & scanningThe paperwork someone re-types every morning
“The information already arrived. It just arrived as a PDF.”
Let's build
What's your AI Nirvana?
Tell us where you want to go. We'll bring the team, build the product, and grow it with you — and you own it.
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