What this costs you today
The processes below are the ones that consume the most hours in this sector. Work out which apply to you, and the annual figure is the budget the manual version is already spending.
| Done by hand today | Hours / week | Cost / year | After automation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual stock counts and availability checks | 5–10 hrs | €5,750–€11,500 | Physical, reserved and sellable quantities computed from recorded movements rather than estimated. |
| Assigning and chasing picks | 4–7 hrs | €4,600–€8,050 | An ordered queue with priority taken from the order commitment rather than from whoever is loudest. |
| Investigating stock discrepancies | 2–5 hrs | €2,300–€5,750 | Every movement recorded with actor and timestamp, so a discrepancy has a history instead of being written off. |
Annual figures are the stated weekly hours multiplied by 46 working weeks at a €25 hourly loaded cost. They are arithmetic on a typical range, not results measured at a client — substitute your own hours and rate for a figure that means something.
Warehouse and reservations module in production build
The operations platform I built covers inventory availability, reservations and warehouse work as first-class modules, with background job orchestration for the long-running integration workflows and containerised service boundaries for the API, worker and connector layers.
Where the time actually goes
Availability is a guess
Physical stock, reserved stock and sellable stock are three different numbers. When only the first is tracked, the other two are estimated, and the estimate is wrong exactly when it matters.
Picking priorities set by whoever shouts
Without a queue that encodes priority, urgency is decided socially rather than by the actual commitment made to the customer.
No audit trail on stock movements
When stock goes missing, there is no record of who moved what and when, so the discrepancy is absorbed rather than explained.
What gets built
Reservation and availability engine
Physical, reserved and sellable quantities tracked separately and derived from recorded movements, so availability is computed rather than asserted.
Warehouse task queues
Picks and moves as an ordered, assignable queue with priority encoded from the order commitment, not from whoever is loudest.
Movement audit trail
Every stock change recorded as an event with actor and timestamp, making discrepancies explainable instead of absorbed.
Integration monitoring
A live view of every inbound and outbound integration, so a stalled feed is noticed by the system rather than by a customer.
Services that fit this sector
The service lines that solve the problems above, in the order they usually get built.
Operations software for businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets but not into SAP.
Making the tools you already run behave as one system.
Production-grade pipelines that ingest, transform, and serve data reliably at scale.
Decision-ready dashboards built on reliable data, not another layer of spreadsheet confusion.
Custom Python scripts and scrapers that collect, transform, and deliver data on schedule.
How a project runs
The same sequence every time, whichever service or market is involved. It is deliberately front-loaded: most of the risk in an automation project sits in understanding the process, not in building it.
Map the process before writing anything
The first session is spent on how the work actually happens, which is almost never how the documented process says it happens. Who touches what, in which order, and where the time really goes. Most failed automation projects failed here rather than in the build, because they automated the described process instead of the real one.
Measure the cost of doing nothing
Hours per week, error rate, and what those hours would otherwise be worth. This is what decides whether a process is worth automating at all — and it is also the number you compare against afterwards, which is why it gets recorded before anything is built rather than estimated after.
Build the smallest useful version
One process, working end to end, in production, before anything else starts. A narrow system that people actually use beats a broad one that waits on a second phase, and the edge cases that matter only surface once real work runs through it.
Run it against reality
The first two weeks of live use produce more design corrections than any amount of planning. Failures get surfaced loudly, retried and logged, because silent failure is the most expensive property a workflow can have and the one noticed last.
Hand it over properly
Documentation, credentials, and a walkthrough with whoever will maintain it. A system only one person understands is a liability regardless of how well it runs, so handover is part of the work rather than an optional extra at the end.
Ways to work together
Three arrangements cover almost every engagement. Most start with the first or the second; the third only makes sense once something is live.
Fixed-scope project
One defined process, a fixed price and an agreed definition of done. The right fit when the problem is clear and bounded — an order flow to connect, a CRM to build, a reporting pack to automate. Most first engagements are this, because it lets both sides find out how the other works without a long commitment.
Assessment first
One to two weeks mapping processes and measuring where the hours actually go, ending in a ranked list with effort and payback estimates. Useful when there is a backlog of automation ideas and no agreement on which matters. The document stands on its own and is yours whether or not you build anything with me.
Ongoing retainer
A recurring block of time for maintenance, extension and new automations once systems are live. Integrations break when the systems either side of them change, and a retainer means that gets fixed before it becomes an outage rather than after.
How the working relationship is set up
Remote, with real overlap
Work is delivered remotely. Across Europe and the Nordics the working day is effectively identical; in the Gulf it starts three hours ahead, which still leaves your full morning covered. There is no local office in any market, and none is claimed anywhere on this site.
You own what gets built
Source code, infrastructure and data stay yours. Systems are deployed on infrastructure you control — your server, a European provider, or a VPS in your own account. There is no per-seat licence and no dependency on me continuing to be involved.
Self-hosting is a first-class option
Self-hosted n8n, self-hosted databases and locally run models are all supported and, in several of these markets, preferred. Where no data may reach a third-party API, that constraint shapes the architecture from the start rather than being retrofitted.
Direct contact, one person
You deal with the person building the system. There is no account manager relaying requirements, which is the main practical advantage an independent consultant has over an agency at this size — and the main reason scope stays honest.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need to replace our WMS?
Usually not. Most operations at this size do not have a WMS to replace — they have a spreadsheet and a whiteboard. Where a WMS does exist, the work is integration rather than replacement.
How do you handle stock discrepancies?
By making them visible. When every movement is an event with an actor and a timestamp, a discrepancy has a traceable history instead of being written off at stock-take.
What if we are not sure automation is the right answer?
Then the assessment is the right starting point, and it is designed to be able to conclude that you should not automate something. A process that is broken should be fixed before it is automated, and one that runs twice a month rarely earns the build. Receiving that answer in week one is far cheaper than discovering it after a project.
We have been burned by a failed automation project before.
That is common, and the cause is usually scoping or adoption rather than technology — a system built for the documented process rather than the real one, or one nobody was trained to maintain. Both are addressed by mapping the real process first and treating handover as part of the work.
How do we avoid depending on one person?
By owning everything: source code, infrastructure, credentials and documentation, with a walkthrough for whoever maintains it. The test is whether another developer could pick the system up from the repository and the documentation alone, and that is the standard handover is written to.
Is our data safe?
It stays where you need it to. Systems can run entirely inside your own infrastructure, including self-hosted models where no data may reach a third-party API. Where GDPR applies, data stays in the EU by default, with named access control and audit logging as standard rather than as an upgrade.
How quickly can something be running?
A first working version of a single process is typically weeks rather than months. Larger platforms are sequenced as modules so something is in production early and the rest builds on a foundation that already survives real use.