# Field services firm: 14 hours a week reclaimed from one persons head Source: https://getstartedwithai.net/case-studies/field-services-job-sheet-intake Site: Get Started With AI Tagline: Build AI automations that actually run your business. Audience: solo professionals, freelancers, consultants and AI implementers in training Contact: hello@getstartedwithai.co.uk This Markdown companion is generated from the prerendered page for AI crawlers. # Field services firm: 14 hours a week reclaimed from one persons head The field services companys job-sheet intake process had been running for seven years. Emma, the office manager, had handled it for six of those years. She could describe it fluently in 12 minutes. When I asked her to write it down before we built the automation, it took three hours and two conversations. The written version had four steps that were not in the verbal description. Two of those steps involved judgment calls that only Emma made because only Emma knew the context. Without the documentation exercise, we would have automated a process that did not exist. ## The starting point - Field services firm: 85 staff, regional UK coverage. - Job-sheet intake: about 80 jobs per week, all routed by Emma. - Time spent on intake: estimated 18 hours a week, almost all hers. - Years Emma had run this: 6. - Written documentation of the process before we started: zero. ## The Whiteboard Problem Verbal descriptions of long-running processes are never complete. The first conversation with Emma surfaced 8 steps. The second conversation surfaced 12. Writing it down required three hours and a third conversation; the final version had 14 steps and named four judgment calls she had been making for years without realising. Two of those judgment calls had no documented rule. We had to invent the rules with her before we could automate. ## The build - Step W: counted the hours. Found the bottleneck was a single person. - Step I: documented the 14 steps and 4 judgment calls. Named explicit rules for each. - Step R: built a Zapier intake automation that handled the 11 deterministic steps and surfaced the 3 judgment-call steps to Emma for fast review. - Step E: trained Emmas deputy on the documented process. Built a 1-page handover. ## The result - Hours reclaimed: 14 a week (down from 18 to 4). - Coverage: when Emma is on holiday, her deputy now runs the process from the documentation. - Time to complete documentation: 3 hours of Emmas time. - Time to build the automation: 2 days. - Lasting benefit: the firm now has a documented process even if the automation breaks. ## The Bus Test (12 months later) A year after this build, we ran the Bus Test on the firm: if Emma left tomorrow, could the company keep running? Before the WIRE engagement the answer was no, the intake would collapse. After the engagement the answer was yes, because the process was documented, the automation handled the routine cases and the deputy was trained. The build was insurance, not just a saving. ## See this kind of build run live The free webinar walks through the WIRE Method end to end on a real audience workflow. 60 minutes, no upsell. Bring one repeatable task; leave with a mapped automation. ### Live build session The next live build session covers the same shape as the case studies on this page. [Join the next session](/webinar) ## Questions people ask before they start ### Did Emma resent being automated? No. The 14 hours she reclaimed went to higher-value work she had not had time for. She was the project champion by the end of the engagement. ### What about the judgment calls? The automation surfaced them to Emma rather than guessing. Over time, several of the judgment calls became deterministic rules; the others stayed human-reviewed. The split is 80 percent automated, 20 percent reviewed. ### How big does a firm need to be for this to make sense? 10 staff and up. Below that, the documentation cost rarely pays back; you can usually run the process out of one head without the risk. ### What was the hardest part? Getting Emma to slow down enough to write it down. Her instinct was to do the job, not document it. Three hours of focused documentation was the unlock.