Operations & automation consultancy · United Kingdom
Every business runs on repeated work.
Most of it doesn’t need a person.
Provenance Operations finds the manual, repetitive processes inside small and medium businesses and replaces them with automated systems reliable enough to forget about. Built on your own accounts, with a human in control of every decision that matters.
A rough measure of what one repetitive process costs to run manually each year.
The process audit puts a real number on this for your operation.
Sec. 01 / The method
Trace it. Build it. Prove it.
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Step 01 · Trace
Follow the work
Understanding comes before automation. We follow one process from the first trigger to the finished output: every handoff, every re-keyed spreadsheet, every manual check that has quietly become someone’s job. You get a plain-English map of the process, what it costs, and whether it deserves to be automated at all.
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Step 02 · Build
Automate what repeats
We build on the accounts and tools you already own, not on a platform rented from us. That means no black boxes and no lock-in. Everything can be inspected, everything keeps working without us, and everything is yours.
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Step 03 · Prove
Keep the judgement human
We test every system against the real work, document it, and hand it over properly. Wherever a decision carries weight (money leaving, promises made, people affected) the system stops and a person signs it off. Machines do the repetition. You keep the judgement.
Sec. 01a / The work this removes
Eight jobs that turn up in almost every business. What each one costs you by hand, and what it becomes once the system runs it.
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T–01
Quotes rebuilt from scratch each time
Drafted from your own templates and prices, ready to approve before it sends
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T–02
Overdue invoices chased by hand
Tracked automatically, reminders sent on schedule, escalated to you when ignored
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T–03
Sign-offs chased over email
Requested and tracked automatically, the approver nudged until they respond
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T–04
The same details re-typed into each system by hand
Read once and written to all of them automatically
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T–05
Reports assembled by hand each time
Pulled from live data on a schedule, ready for you to check
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T–06
New-starter forms sent and re-keyed by hand
Issued, collected, and filed into each system for you
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T–07
Stock levels checked by eye and reordered by hand
Watched continuously, a reorder drafted for you to approve
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T–08
Receipts and figures pulled together at month-end
Collected and reconciled through the month, ready to sign off
Sec. 02 / Working principles
The specification we hold ourselves to.
Five commitments that shape every engagement.
- P–01 Built on your accounts
- Everything runs in tools you own and can open, inspect, and change. If we parted ways tomorrow, every system would keep working, and you would keep every password.
- P–02 A human holds the pen
- Automation handles repetition. A person approves anything with consequences: payments, pricing, promises, people. We design that boundary in from the start, not bolt it on later.
- P–03 Boring technology, chosen deliberately
- Reliability beats novelty. We would rather hand you a plain system that runs quietly for years than a clever one that needs a specialist to keep alive.
- P–04 If automation isn’t the answer, we say so
- Some processes need a better checklist, not a robot. Some need a hire. You get the honest recommendation, including when it means less work for us.
- P–05 The price is fixed before we start
- The fee is agreed in writing before any work begins, and it does not move. It comes from what the audit measures, not from a day rate or a guess. Every automation is priced against the saving it produces, and you keep the larger share of that saving.
Sec. 03 / The engagement
How working together actually runs.
Most people arrive here through a referral, so the way we work is already familiar. This is simply the shape of it.
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Stage 0
A conversation
45 minutes, no charge, no deck. You describe how the work flows; we ask where it hurts. If we cannot help, we say so on the call and point you somewhere better.
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Stage 1
The process audit
A short, fixed-fee diagnostic. We sit inside the real work (the inboxes, the spreadsheets, the handoffs) and give you a written map: what repeats, what it costs, and what is worth automating. The map is yours either way, and you could take it to anyone.
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Stage 2
The build
A fixed scope, agreed in writing, built on your accounts. You see progress as working systems, not status updates, and nothing goes live without your sign-off.
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Stage 3
Handover, properly
Documentation a new hire could follow, a walkthrough with your team, and a running-in period where we stay close. After that the system is simply yours, with us a message away.
Sec. 04 / Fair questions
Things people rightly ask.
Who is this for?
Small and medium businesses in the UK, typically owner-run, and typically somewhere between “the founder does everything” and “we have systems, but people spend their day feeding them”. If work in your business gets done by someone re-typing something, we should talk.
What does it cost?
It comes in two parts, both fixed and both agreed before work starts. A one-off setup fee, sized from what the process audit measures. Then a monthly fee for keeping the system running, supported and maintained. Both are set against the annual saving the audit measures, and you keep the majority of it. The audit itself is deliberately small and priced separately. If the numbers do not clearly pay for themselves, we tell you not to proceed.
Do you use AI?
Where it genuinely helps, such as reading documents or drafting routine messages for a person to review, yes. Where reliability matters more than cleverness, no. AI never gets the final word on a decision that matters; that is a design rule, not a preference.
What happens if something breaks?
Every system runs on your own accounts, so it keeps working whether or not we are reachable. We build them to fail loudly rather than quietly, which means a problem shows itself before it does any harm, and each one is documented well enough that another competent person could take it over. After handover we stay a message away.
Sec. 05 / About
Built by an engineer.
Run like one.
Provenance Operations is a one-person firm by design, led by a founder who trained as a mechanical engineer. That background brings a useful habit: nothing ships on a hunch. Everything is drawn, checked and approved, and you assume things will fail so you build them not to.
The same rigour runs through the operational work. We sit inside a business, find what repeats, and replace it with systems a team can trust and inspect. Most automation sold to small firms is a subscription and a prayer. This is quieter, and built to last.
- Practice
- Provenance Operations
- Founder
- Charlie Guano
- Discipline
- Mechanical engineering
- Territory
- United Kingdom
- Scope
- Operations & automation for SMEs
An engineer is trained to see any working thing as a system: inputs, steps, and the points where it strains under load. A business is no different. What looks like a mess is usually just a process nobody has drawn yet, and once it is on paper you can see where the work is going and what to do about it.
Sec. 06 / Contact
Get in touch.
Tell us what a normal week looks like and where the repetitive work piles up. If Provenance Operations can help, we will say how. If it cannot, we will say that too.
Email us directly
hello@provenanceoperations