Most Newcastle businesses we talk to have the same story. They know AI should be doing more of the admin. They have tried ChatGPT. They have been pitched by a London agency charging six figures. And they are still doing the same manual work they were doing last year.
This is a plan for the middle ground. Simple AI automation, deployed in 90 days, built around the way your business actually runs.
Who this is for
Businesses in Newcastle, Durham, Sunderland, Teesside, and the wider North East with between 10 and 200 staff. Ops-heavy operations. Finance, legal, logistics, professional services, manufacturing, or hospitality. Teams where the growth ceiling is set by how many hours people can spend on admin, not by the work itself.
If you are a Newcastle ops manager reading five-figure monthly invoices for manual data entry, this is for you.
What simple actually means
Simple AI automation is not ChatGPT. It is not a Zapier workflow. It is custom software that takes one repetitive, high-volume task in your business and removes the human step.
Examples we have shipped for North East clients:
Invoice to Sage. Supplier invoices arrive in the finance inbox. An AI pipeline reads each one, extracts line items, matches them against purchase orders, and pushes clean data into Sage. The finance clerk reviews exceptions instead of typing.
Case intake for a law firm. Client enquiries arrive by email, web form, and phone transcript. An AI classifier routes them to the right practice area, drafts the initial file note, and schedules a follow-up. The paralegal stops context switching.
Shift handover for a manufacturer. End of shift supervisor writes a free-text report. An AI pipeline extracts downtime events, quality issues, and open actions. The morning ops meeting has a structured summary before anyone arrives.
None of these are novel research. They are boring, concrete, and they pay back fast.
The 90-day plan
Days 1 to 14: audit
We map your operations end to end. Every repetitive process, every handoff, every piece of data that gets copied from one system to another. We score each process on volume, time cost, and automation difficulty.
The output is a ranked list. The top three processes go into the build pipeline. Everything below the line waits.
Days 15 to 45: build the first workflow
We take the highest-ranked process and ship it. Full code. Real integration with your existing systems (Sage, Xero, Salesforce, Microsoft 365, whatever you run on). A real AI pipeline, not a prompt.
By day 45 you have one workflow running in production. Your team sees it working. Volume ramps up.
Days 46 to 75: build the second and third
With the first one live and generating return, we ship the next two. Faster this time, because the infrastructure is already in place.
Days 76 to 90: measure and plan phase two
We pull the numbers. Hours saved. Error rate change. Throughput per head. You see exactly what the first three workflows returned, and we agree the next quarter together.
Why Newcastle matters
You do not strictly need a Newcastle-based agency. You need one that understands UK regulation, British business culture, and the kind of SMB that picks up the phone instead of filling in a form.
Being based in Newcastle means we sit across from you for the discovery session. We know the accountancy and legal firms on Grey Street. We have walked the Team Valley manufacturing estates. We understand why a Tyneside logistics company operates differently from a London one.
It also means our rates are North East rates, not London rates.
What it costs
Our 90-day programme for an SMB is typically in the £22,000 to £55,000 range, depending on the number of workflows and the depth of system integration. That buys you production-grade software, not a prototype.
The full pricing breakdown is in our cost guide for Newcastle SMBs.
Getting started
The first step is a 30-minute discovery call. We tell you straight whether this is a fit, and if it is we send you a written scope within a week.