Document automation

How an HR consultancy turned two and a half hours of document branding into four minutes

An outsourced HR consultancy in the North West. When they take on a new client they produce a branded document pack, 22 policies, three contract types and a set of forms, every one carrying that client's logo, company name and address.

Before

2h 30m per client

After

About 4 minutes

“Mind-bogglingly boring.”

Outsourced HR

The situation

Their onboarding manager branded every document by hand. Open, swap the logo, retype the company name, save, next. Two and a half hours per new client, landing on the person with the most useful things to do.

What we built

One short form. Company name, address, logo. Four minutes later the full pack of 71 documents comes back branded, in their own Drive. Not one word of their HR content is generated or altered. Fifteen years of policy wording is the thing they are proud of.

What we found that they did not know

A scan of all 230 files found 83 near duplicates in mirror folders. Only 120 documents were actually unique. 69 filenames collided. The branding placeholder was written five different ways, including one misspelling. None of this was in the brief.

The work we turned down

We declined to brand 46 of their letters. Disciplinary and grievance letters are bare by design, because they go out on the client's own letterhead. Automating a logo onto those means redesigning documents that end up in tribunals. We said no twice, to work we could have billed for.

The problem nobody would have predicted

The run kept dying with a 403. After 36 documents, then after 21. The cause was shared API quota: every customer on that hosting tier draws from one pool, so strangers' automations were throttling them. Retries made it worse. We built them their own cloud project.

What changed

Two and a half hours per new client, down to about four minutes, unattended
71 documents produced per run, from one short form
Twenty five days from the first call to live in their own environment
Nine defects found and fixed before they ever saw the system
Their automation platform, their Google Workspace, their own cloud project and quota

Sector: Outsourced HR
What we built: Document automation
Documents per run: 71
Time to live: 25 days
Built on: n8n, Google Workspace, Google Docs API

What they own

Everything.

Their automation platform. Their Google Workspace. Their own cloud project and their own API quota. Their templates, in a folder they control. Their output.

The handover document deliberately teaches them to add their own templates: drop a file in the folder, type three markers, done. That was a design choice, not an afterthought. It is the difference between owning your templates and depending on us every time one changes.

Nothing of ours was left inside their systems, and nothing about this build holds them to us.

This client is named in the version of this case study we bring to calls. We are keeping the site anonymous until they have signed off the wording in writing.

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