When an audit is the right next step.
This service is aimed at companies of 10—200 employees where management can feel that the workload is growing faster than revenue, but cannot say precisely where. Usually that shows up as every new wave of orders requiring one more person, reporting eating half of Monday, and nobody in the company knowing how many times a week a given document is retyped from one system into another.
An audit is the right call if you recognise at least two of these:
- Three or more systems are in use that do not talk to each other — accounting, CRM and inventory, for instance.
- Management reports are assembled by hand in spreadsheets and are out of date by the time the meeting starts.
- Vendor proposals are on the table with no independent view on whether the proposed solution addresses your actual problem.
- AI is on the agenda — from the board, from competitors, or from staff already using tools on their own — but it is not clear where to start or what is permitted with client data.
- A process needs automating, but the previous attempt ended with a system nobody started using.
When it is not needed. If there is one clearly defined process to automate and it is already known how, an audit is a redundant step — go straight to systems integration and process automation. Nor is it meant for companies collecting comparable quotes: this is not a technical specification, it is the basis for a decision.
Four documents, not a presentation.
The output is material you can put on the table at a management meeting and decide a budget from. It has four parts.
A map of current processes and systems
A diagram of how information actually travels between people, departments and systems — not how it is supposed to according to the procedure document. For each handover we record who performs it, how often it happens and how long it takes. This map is usually the first moment management sees that the same document is entered three times.
A prioritised list of automation opportunities
For each opportunity we give the approximate annual saving in working hours, an approximate implementation cost range, and the implementation difficulty. The list is ordered by return against difficulty, so the first three rows are usually where to begin. If an opportunity looks attractive but will not pay off in practice, it stays on the list with an explanation of why not to do it — that is as useful an outcome as a recommendation to act.
Recommendations for data security and AI usage
We record which data in the company must not be handed to external AI services, which processes are already happening outside your control (staff using public tools with client data), and what GDPR means in practice for each recommended integration. From that comes a short, readable AI usage policy you can circulate to the team.
An implementation roadmap for 6—12 months
Stages with approximate timelines and a budget estimate for each. The roadmap is built so that every stage produces a measurable result before the next one starts — meaning you can stop at any point and what has been invested so far still works.
All four documents are your property. They can be used as a brief for another vendor or for an in-house team, and that is entirely acceptable — the audit is paid for separately precisely because its objectivity must not depend on whether an implementation contract follows.
Four stages across two to four weeks.
Week 0 — free conversation and scoping
Thirty minutes to work out whether an audit is needed at all. That conversation usually already makes clear how many processes are worth including. Afterwards you receive a fixed-price proposal with a defined scope. If the problem turns out to be narrower than it looked, we say so — an audit sold to a company that does not need one is a bad deal for both sides.
Week 1 — interviews with the people doing the work
We talk to the people who run the processes day to day: the bookkeeper, the sales assistant, the warehouse supervisor. Not the manager describing how the process is meant to work. That distinction is the entire point of an audit — most failed automation projects automate a process that looks different on paper than it does in life. Each interview runs 60—90 minutes.
This stage is also where we record the baseline in numbers: how many times a week the process runs, how long each occurrence takes, how many people are involved. Those are the numbers any later claim of saving is measured against — without them, such a claim would only ever be an estimate.
Week 2 — tracing systems and data flow
We look inside the existing systems in read-only mode: which fields are filled, where data is duplicated, which integrations already exist and which are broken. We also check what happens to files that never enter any system at all — email attachments, shared folders, printouts.
Weeks 3—4 — analysis, prioritisation, handover
We prepare the four documents and present them to management in a 90-minute session, walking through the first three recommended actions and answering questions about the estimates. The documents then stay with you.
When a process first becomes visible.
Verbasco, a B2B supplier of stainless steel pipes and industrial components in Valmiera, originally came with a specific question about Odoo CRM. Tracing the data path showed that the largest volume of manual work was not in sales but at the end of delivery: for every shipment, confirmation of receipt and signing of the delivery paperwork were handled by hand and outside the system, so delivery status was not visible in the same place as the sales data.
That is a typical audit finding: a problem the company experiences as “the CRM does not fit” turns out to be a process that does not happen in the system at all. The Verbasco case study is currently published in Latvian only — ask for it on the call and we will walk through it in English.
A fixed price, set before the work starts.
An audit is not billed by the hour. The price is fixed in the proposal after the free conversation and does not change, even if the work turns out larger than planned. Ranges for a company of 10—200 employees:
Prices exclude VAT. What moves the price: the number of processes, the number of systems, and how much of the existing process is documented at all. What does not move it: your revenue.
How an audit pays for itself. A simple calculation: if the audit finds one process consuming 20 working hours a month and automating it costs EUR 4,000, the investment returns in roughly a year and keeps working afterwards. The audit itself saves nothing — it determines where to invest so you do not save in the wrong place.
Questions asked before an audit.
How much does an IT and AI audit cost?
The price is fixed and agreed before the work starts. For a company of 10—200 employees the typical range is EUR 1,500—6,000 excluding VAT, depending on how many processes and systems the audit covers. You get an exact proposal after a free 30-minute conversation, with no commitment.
How long does it take and how much of our time does it need?
The audit takes two to four weeks. From your side that usually means one 60—90 minute interview with each process owner involved, plus read-only access to your existing systems. Management time is needed for the opening conversation and the presentation of findings.
Do we need to be ready for AI before the audit?
No. Most of the companies we start with have not yet automated their basic processes, and often that is exactly where the biggest gain sits rather than in AI. If AI does not pay off in a particular place, the audit says so plainly.
Are we obliged to implement with you afterwards?
No. The output is a document that belongs to you and is usable without our further involvement — including as a brief for another vendor or for your in-house team.
What happens to our data during the audit?
A written confidentiality agreement is signed before the first conversation about your processes. Read-only access is enough for an audit; we do not copy production data outside your environment unless that is separately agreed in writing.
Is an audit worth it if we only have 10—20 employees?
Yes, but at a smaller scope. A company of 10—20 people usually needs an audit covering two or three processes rather than the whole business, which is also faster and cheaper.
Start with a 30-minute conversation. Free and with no commitment — you get concrete recommendations during the call itself, even if we do not work together afterwards.
Book a free 30-minute consultation