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Success story · Our own house
induSmart: what we sell you, we use ourselves first
We wanted to grow without becoming an hours factory. So we built for ourselves what we build for our clients. This is the result.
A consultancy grows by hiring people. We wanted to grow without losing quality and without inflating the team, so we built the iS Suite: our own way of working, where the technology takes care of everything repetitive and the people devote themselves to what really adds something: thinking about the client's business.
×2
capacity, with the same team
−70%
of repetitive tasks
24/7
working, at night too
0
extra people to grow
* Figures from our own operation, subject to closing and periodic updating.
The context
induSmart is a small, specialised consultancy. We are not a big firm with a hundred people: we are a small team of people who know their trade, who know industry from the inside and have seen how decisions are taken in a company that manufactures, assembles or distributes.
That is our value. The client does not want a pretty report: they want somebody to understand their business in two meetings and tell them where they are losing money. That is done by an experienced person. And that is why our capacity depended on something very simple: the hours the team had.
That is where the ceiling any service business knows appears. More projects come in and the classic way out is to hire. But you have to find somebody, train them and wait months until they deliver. Meanwhile deadlines stretch and the experienced people put out fires: growing that way made the service worse.
So we asked ourselves the same question we ask any client on day one: which part of what we do every day does not need a person? The answer was uncomfortable: far more than we thought.
The challenge
On paper the goal was simple: to do more with the same. In practice, behind each point there was a problem that made itself felt every Monday morning, looking at the week and seeing that it did not fit.
- Getting more work out without dropping the quality or stretching the deadlines.
- Getting the repetitive tasks that eat the good hours off our backs.
- Keeping the judgement of experienced people in every project, not templates.
- Growing without inflating the structure or making the service more expensive.
The first is the hardest: the temptation is to speed up by cutting review, and that works for two months and is then paid for. The repetitive work, by contrast, hurts in silence: copying data from one place to another, repeating the same quotation, chasing by email a figure that is already in a spreadsheet. That is where the silly mistakes that cost dearly are born.
The third point was non-negotiable: an industrial business owner notices straight away when they are served something made on a production line. The fourth is common sense: if growing fifty per cent means fattening the structure by as much again, the client ends up paying for that structure without receiving anything better.
The solution: building our own system
The iS Suite is not a program you buy: it is the way we work, with the technology doing the heavy lifting and the people deciding. We built it piece by piece, solving real problems. These are the six fronts that hold it up.
1 · Finding clients steadily
The ranking work — appearing on Google and in the answers of artificial intelligence when somebody asks about what we do — rests on our own tools. It moves forward every day, without depending on somebody finding a gap on a Friday afternoon.
Acquisition stopped being a one-off campaign and started happening on its own. When the work does not depend on anybody's goodwill, it gets done. And a steady trickle of interested people removes a very common anxiety: living off the last referral.
2 · Producing content far faster
Texts, reports, proposals and deliverables are prepared with the help of artificial intelligence and always go through human review. You gain speed, you do not lose judgement: nothing goes out without a person having read it in full.
Before, starting a document from a blank page cost half a morning. Now that half morning goes on sharpening the angle and taking out what is surplus. The draft has stopped being the bottleneck.
3 · Automating what repeats
Quotations, alerts, moving information between tools, project tracking… everything that used to be “log in here and copy over there” now happens on its own, without anybody having to note it on a sticky note.
It looks like small change: fifteen minutes here, twenty there. Over a month it is whole days recovered. And an expensive fault disappears, the badly copied figure, which tends to show up once it is already in the client's hands.
4 · Assistants that work around the clock
We have digital assistants that execute complete tasks from start to finish and keep running with the office closed, connected to our own management system and to invoicing. They do not answer the odd question: they do the work.
You notice it the moment you arrive. At eight in the morning there are already alerts sent and documents prepared. The team sits down and finds the desk ready, instead of tidying up what was left over the day before.
5 · Measuring to know what works
None of the above is any use if it is not measured. We have simple dashboards that answer business questions: what each project really costs, where the hours go and what brings us clients.
Measuring changed the internal conversations. No more “it seems to me”: you look at the number and decide. And it lets you stop quickly whatever is not delivering, which in a small company is worth as much as getting it right.
6 · Documenting so as not to depend on anyone
Every process is written in language anybody understands: what is done, in what order and who decides. They are not hundred-page manuals, they are guides you read in five minutes.
The result is that the system does not live in one person's head. Somebody goes on holiday or somebody new joins and the work carries on the same. What is more, reading the process cold is the best way to see the steps that are surplus.
How we did it, step by step
None of this was done in one go, and that is the most important detail of the case. There was no great one-year project with an enormous budget. There was a list ordered by a single question: what is stealing the most hours from us right now?
We started with the most boring and repetitive things. We would change one thing, leave it a few weeks and look at whether it really saved time or only moved it somewhere else. If the saving was real, we moved on to the next one; if not, it was removed without ceremony.
That pace has two advantages. An economic one: each step is paid for by the hours the previous one frees up, so you do not have to put all the money in at the start. And a human one: when somebody sees they have got two afternoons a month back, there is nothing left to convince them of.
Results
We produce more, better and faster, and the team has something that used to be scarce: time to think about each client's business instead of fighting with the day-to-day. We have grown without adding headcount.
Day to day it shows in concrete things. Proposals go out in hours, not days. Follow-up no longer depends on somebody remembering to write an email. And the projects that did not fit before now do, because the mechanical hours are free.
Something less visible changed too: peace of mind. With the repetitive work solved and measured, the absurd emergencies end and you can say yes knowing you will deliver. Working with room to breathe shows in the quality and in the atmosphere.
And there is a side effect that matters a lot to us: when we propose something to a client, it is not theory. We have tried it first in our own house. We know what it costs, where it gets stuck and what hours it gives back.
Why this case matters
- If your supplier does not apply what they sell you, something is wrong: let them show you their house before talking about yours.
- Technology used well multiplies a good team; with no judgement behind it, it only serves to do badly done things faster.
- Growing does not have to mean hiring more people: there is almost always room before that, in the hours of mechanical work.
What it includes
Not every company needs the six pieces, nor to start with all of them at once. You choose where it hurts most and expand once the saving is proven. This is what there is in our house and what we build in our clients'.
Client acquisitionContent creationTask automationAssistants that work on their ownConnection with management and invoicingDashboards
“We offer what we use: our own house is the best demonstration.”
— The induSmart team
Frequently asked questions
Does this work for an industrial company or only for a consultancy?
It works for any company with tasks that repeat every day. The content changes, not the idea: seeing what work does not need a person and taking it off the team. In a workshop it is quotations, delivery notes, deadline alerts or order tracking.
In industry there is usually more room, not less: plenty of companies manufacture superbly and run their administration on spreadsheets, emails and phone calls. There the hours recovered show up within a few weeks.
Does artificial intelligence replace people?
In our case it has replaced nobody: it has let us grow without hiring. It does the repetitive work and leaves people the decisions, the judgement and the relationship with the client.
We see it like this: technology is a good assistant and a bad person in charge. It prepares, tidies, alerts and gets work ahead, but there is always somebody who reviews and signs off.
Where do you start in an ordinary company?
By looking at where the hours go. There are almost always two or three tasks that eat up a lot of time and add little: that is where you start, you measure and then you expand. You do not need a three-month assessment.
What matters is starting with something small and measurable. A first step that shows in one particular person's diary convinces more than any presentation.
How long before it shows?
The first improvements arrive in weeks, not years. If you start with the most repetitive work, in the first month there is usually somebody saying they have got afternoons back. That is the best sign that the choice was right.
The full effect, that of working in a different way, is another matter: that is built over several months. But you do not have to wait until the end to get paid; each stretch brings its saving from the moment it starts.
Do we have to change the programs we already use?
Almost never. The usual thing is to use what is there and make the pieces talk to each other. If their management system works and the people know it, changing it is usually bad business: months lost and little gained.
Our work is more about removing the manual steps between programs: making the data entered once reach on its own wherever it has to go. We only propose changing tool when the current one really does get in the way.
What if my team resists changing the way it works?
It is the most common reaction and it is reasonable: almost everyone has lived through a change imposed from above that only meant more work. That is why we do not start by announcing a transformation, but by taking off somebody the task they hate most.
When they see they have stopped losing two afternoons a month on something they hated, the resistance turns into interest. What usually happens next is that they are the ones proposing what to automate.