Answer

How quickly can a first automation go live?

Single-channel automations go live in 1–14 days: missed-call text-back, email triage drafts, instant replies to web enquiries. Workflows that connect two or three systems take 15–35 days. Anything touching invoicing, an ERP or a multi-step approval chain takes 36+ days. You get a date in writing at scoping.

Last updated: 22 September 2026

What happens inside the 1–14 day band

Days one to three are scoping and access. Days four to eight are the build plus a test run on your real historical data, so you see the output on cases you already know the right answer to. The remaining days are corrections and a supervised launch where a person still approves everything.

What pushes a project into the longer bands

Money and legal consequences. Anything that writes an invoice, changes stock or signs something is tested far longer, and the automation runs in suggest-only mode for a period before it is allowed to act on its own.

The other cause is waiting: for access, for a decision about which price list is the valid one, for a supplier to confirm something. This is the most common reason a 15-day project becomes a 30-day one, and it is avoidable.

Asked next

Can we run it in parallel with the manual process?

That is the default. For the first period the automation prepares everything and a person approves, so you compare the two outputs side by side before switching.

When do we see the first result?

Usually in the first week, on the test run over your historical cases. That is before go-live and before anything reaches a customer.