For Sandra and Derek · not a slide about AI
The morning is decoding.
The afternoon is re-typing.
Writing the reply is the easy bit. Sandra already said that. Thirty seconds once you know what they want. The day disappears in two other places: working out the email, and getting it into Orbit without turning a fridge into a freezer.
Where the time actually goes
Sandra, mornings
Shared inbox is one pile: orders, chases, complaints, invoices, “the usual”. Half the morning is gone before anyone has keyed a line.
Tom, afternoons
Every format going. Clean PO, forwarded chain, handwritten list. End of day, forty orders in, the phone going. That is how Lansdowne got fridges instead of freezers.
Meena, three days
Invoice queries land in ops first, get half-answered, then bounce. Greenfields 88231 has been going round for weeks.
What we will not automate
- Hillside. Sandra’s words: you’re not putting a robot on that account. Draft only, she sends or she calls.
- Sending mail. An acknowledgement that goes out wrong is worse than a slow one.
- Writing into Orbit. There is no API. Building a fake import would be theatre. Tom still keys. We make the keying boring and checkable.
- “The usual.” Camden’s standing order lives in Sandra’s head. The notes say it varies. We guess from the last few months and stop for confirmation.
The one workflow we would build first
Inbox and purchase orders → a pack Tom can check, then type. Same pass proposes the open-items row so the spreadsheet is not two days behind, and a draft in the house voice so Sandra is not starting from a blank.
Not quotes. Not a new ERP. Not “AI on the inbox” that replies by itself. Derek asked for that. We would tell him no.
What changes on Monday
Sandra
Opens this instead of living in Gmail plus the sheet. Category, owner, and the nasty flags (3-phase, fridge/freezer, at-risk) are already on the item. She still assigns Hillside to herself.
Tom
Gets a line list with codes and prices from the real price list, yellow where we guessed. Copies the pack, keys Orbit, ticks it. Afternoons back is the point.
Six weeks in, did it help?
- First-response hours on the open-items log, especially Copper Pot and Hillside.
- Keying errors: fridge/freezer, missing 3-phase check. Count them. That number should fall.
- How often Tom accepts the pack vs how often he starts again from the email. If he starts again, we built the wrong thing.
- Invoice queries reaching Meena the same day, not on the second bounce.
If those do not move, we stop. Extra screens nobody watches was Sandra’s actual fear.