Fix the process before you automate it.
We map how your work actually flows, find where it stalls and doubles back, then help you simplify what should go and automate only what earns it.
SOURCES: BOC GROUP BPM STUDY 2026, AND GARTNER FORECAST PUBLISHED JUNE 2025.
Which process in your operation takes longer than anyone can explain?
Thirty minutes with the engineer who does this work. No slide deck.
Six things the process diagram never shows.
Most teams are too close to their own processes to see them clearly, and the official map rarely matches what happens on a Tuesday.
- 01 A step that exists because a system used to be slow, and it no longer is
- 02 A spreadsheet somebody maintains that nobody asked for
- 03 An approval that has never once been refused
- 04 A handoff where work waits two days for four minutes of attention
- 05 The same information checked three times by three people
- 06 A workaround so old that everyone has forgotten it is one
What goes into an XtractSol process audit
Each engagement is built around your real processes and your goals. Start with one workflow that is clearly hurting, or take a broader look across the operation.
The process as it runs
Mapped from the real flow rather than the documented one, including the workarounds. That honest picture is what everything else depends on.
Where the time actually goes
We find where work piles up, where effort is duplicated, and where a handoff turns four minutes of work into two days of elapsed time.
What deserves automating
Which steps are worth automating and which are better simplified or removed, so investment goes where it pays rather than everywhere at once.
Simplified before it is sped up
The process reshaped to cut wasted steps and smooth the handoffs, so the work flows cleanly before any technology is added on top.
A baseline, then a comparison
Measured before and after against the same definition, so improvement is a number you can check rather than a feeling that things seem better.
Processes drift
New bottlenecks appear as the business changes, so we help you keep watching rather than treating this as a project that finishes.
Eleven steps, and what happened to each of them
This is a purchase approval, mapped as it actually ran. The instinct in most automation projects is to take these eleven steps and make each one faster. The audit asks a different question first: does this step need to exist at all?
Roughly nine days elapsed, of which about ninety minutes was anyone actually working on it.
Three removed outright, two merged into one, two automated. Four left exactly as they were.
Step five is the one worth dwelling on. Work was held for a Thursday batch that existed because a system retired three years ago could only accept updates weekly. Nobody decided to keep it. It simply survived, and it was adding up to five days to a process that needed ninety minutes of attention. An automation project would have made that wait faster to administer. The audit deleted it. Note also that more steps were removed than automated, which is the usual result and the reason we map before we build.
We map it with your team, not at them.
The people doing the work already know where it goes wrong. Most of this job is asking properly and then measuring.
Observe
Real cases followed end to end, including the workarounds.
UsBaseline
Measured before anything changes, so improvement can be proved later.
UsQuestion
Every step tested against whether it still needs to exist.
TogetherDecide
What to remove, simplify, automate or leave alone is your call.
Your teamChange
Staged rather than switched on at once, with the people who do the work involved.
TogetherRe-measure
Against the same baseline, so the gain is a number rather than an impression.
UsWhy the best outcome of an audit is sometimes less work for us
We are an automation company recommending that you automate less
There is an obvious tension in a firm that builds automation also selling the advice about whether to build it. The resolution is that the audit is priced and delivered on its own, and you can take the findings and act on them without us. If the honest answer is that three steps should be deleted and nothing needs building, that is the answer you get, and it costs us the larger piece of work.
We do it that way because the alternative erodes quickly. A client who is automated into a process they should have simplified finds out eventually, and they tell people. The evidence backs the sequence too: only around one in nine organisations currently uses diagnostic methods such as process mining to understand their own processes, while automation capability is being adopted far faster than that. Building on an unexamined process is the most common way these projects end up cancelled for unclear value.
Deleted work costs nothing to run, never breaks, and needs no maintenance. It is the only genuinely free improvement available.
Evidence, not assumptions
We use whatever gives an honest picture of the process, which is usually a combination rather than one method.
How much can be measured from system data depends on what your tools actually log. Where the record is thin, we say so and rely more on observation rather than presenting estimates as measurements.
Findings you can act on without us
- ✓ A map of the process as it actually runs, workarounds included
- ✓ A measured baseline you keep, whoever does the work next
- ✓ Each step marked to remove, simplify, automate or leave alone
- ✓ An honest read on the gains, including where there are none
Mapped in weeks, proved with numbers
We learn how your work really flows before recommending a single change, then improve in deliberate stages.
Discovery call
The process that frustrates you most, and where the delays and the rework show up.
Process audit
Mapped end to end from real cases, with a measured baseline and an honest read on the gains.
Redesign and build
Steps removed or simplified first, then automation added only where it earns its place.
Measure and sustain
Re-measured against the same baseline, then watched as new bottlenecks appear elsewhere.
How do you find what needs fixing?
We map how the process actually runs rather than how it is documented, which usually means sitting with the people doing it and following real cases end to end. The gap between the two is where most of the waste lives, because the workarounds people invented to cope with a broken step never make it into the official diagram.
Do we have to automate everything?
No, and often you should not. Some steps are better removed than automated, and a step that exists only because another step was slow usually disappears once the first is fixed. We would rather delete work than automate it, because deleted work costs nothing to run and never breaks.
How do you measure whether it worked?
We benchmark the process before anything changes, then measure again afterwards against the same baseline. Without that first measurement there is no honest way to tell improvement from optimism, which is why we take it before recommending anything.
What if the audit says the process is fine?
Then we tell you, and you have spent a small amount to find out that your problem is somewhere else. That happens, and it is a better outcome than a project that automates something already working while the actual constraint stays where it is.
Will this disrupt the team while it is happening?
The mapping stage is mostly observation and conversation, so it costs your team a few hours rather than their week. Changes are staged rather than switched on all at once, and the people who do the work are involved in designing the change, because a process improved without them tends not to survive contact with a busy Monday.
What does it cost?
The audit is a fixed fee agreed up front, and it stands alone. If the work that follows is worth doing, we price it separately once we know what it actually involves, and you are free to take the findings and implement them yourself.
Ready to get started?
Book a free discovery call and we will map how agentic AI can fit your workflows.