Workflow automation · Indianapolis
Automate the work that repeats every week.
For Indianapolis and central Indiana businesses whose week goes to filing, checking, chasing and re-keying. I move recurring, rule-based work off people and into systems that record what they did, built on the Microsoft 365, Google or cloud tools you already pay for.
What is worth automating
A task is worth moving off people when it passes three tests. It is recurring: daily or weekly, not twice a year. It is rule-based: the same steps every time, even if there are many of them. And it is consequential when missed: a skipped check costs money, a client or an audit finding.
Tasks that fail those tests usually stay with people, and I will say so. Automating a rare or judgement-heavy task costs more than it saves.
Typical workflows
Four kinds of work that come up in almost every small business, and how each goes wrong when it is done by hand.
Documents that arrive by email, filed without anyone filing them
Referrals, invoices, signed forms and reports arrive in a shared inbox, get identified, and are saved against the right client or job.
Where it goes wrong by hand: attachments saved to the wrong folder, or not saved at all, and found missing weeks later.
What I build: intake that files the clear cases, flags the unclear ones for a person, and keeps a record of every document handled.
Checking the work happened, every day, automatically
Session notes completed, timesheets submitted, renewals due: the checks someone runs every morning, run for them.
Where it goes wrong by hand: the check is skipped on a busy day, which is the day it mattered.
What I build: a scheduled audit that reports only the exceptions, and escalates to the next person if nobody acts.
Information typed once, not three times
A new client entered in the CRM, then the billing system, then a spreadsheet.
Where it goes wrong by hand: typos that disagree between systems, and hours a week spent copying.
What I build: one system of record and connections that carry the information to the others, with a log of what moved.
The right person told, at the right time, once
Reminders, approvals and hand-offs that currently depend on someone remembering to send an email.
Where it goes wrong by hand: the reminder never goes, or goes to everyone, so nobody reads it.
What I build: notification paths that reach one named person and stop at a human wherever judgement is required.
What one task costs
Move the sliders to one task your team does every week.
240 hours a year
$8,400 in staff time
That is one task, at 48 working weeks a year. The full calculator takes your whole list.
AI or plain automation?
Plain rules are cheaper, faster and more predictable, and most of a good workflow is rules. AI earns a step where the input is unstructured: a scanned referral, a free-text email, a call that needs summarising. The workflows that hold up are mostly rules, with one AI step where it helps and a person approving what it produced.
How it runs
- Discovery
- A fixed-fee look at the work as it is done now, which tasks pass the three tests, and what each would cost to automate.
- Build
- One workflow at a time, each quoted on its own, so scope and price are settled before work starts.
- Evidence
- Every automated action recorded and retained as long as you need it, so the audit trail is a by-product rather than another task.
- Handover
- A runbook for each workflow: what it does, how to tell it is working, and how to switch it off and do the task by hand.
In Indianapolis
BB Cloud Developments is based in Indianapolis. I meet clients in person across central Indiana, including Carmel, Fishers, Noblesville, Westfield, Zionsville, Greenwood, Lawrence, Avon and Plainfield, and work remotely with businesses anywhere in the United States. You work directly with the person building it.
Questions
What tools do you build automation with?
Usually the ones you already pay for. For a business on Microsoft 365 that means Power Automate, SharePoint and Azure; for Google Workspace, Google's own tools; and in both cases the connections your line-of-business software already offers. Where something you own can do the job, that beats adding another subscription.
How much does workflow automation cost?
Each workflow is quoted as a fixed fee against what discovery found, so you know the price before work starts. The recurring work calculator on this site tells you what the manual version costs you now, which is the ceiling worth paying.
What happens when an automation breaks?
It says so. Every automation records what it did and alerts a named person when it cannot finish, and the runbook explains how to fix it or switch it off and do the task by hand. Silent failure is the one outcome the design rules out.
Do we have to replace our software?
Almost never. Most of the work is connecting the systems you already have, so that information typed once arrives everywhere it is needed.
Can automation handle health or other regulated data?
Yes. The data map, the vendor agreements such as a BAA, and log retention are part of the build, so the evidence trail is there when an auditor asks for it.
Is this AI?
Sometimes. Plain rules are cheaper and more predictable, and most of a good workflow is rules. AI earns a step where the input is unstructured, like a scanned referral or a free-text email, and that step keeps a person approving the result.
Next step
Tell me the task your team would most like to stop doing. I will tell you whether it passes the three tests.