Process automation between your systems

Process automation means software carries out the fixed, recurring steps in a business process, usually between systems that do not talk to each other: reading the mail, filling the record, filing the document, sending the confirmation. The steps where the answer is always the same are taken out; the decisions stay with people. Goudbeek does this from Almere, for businesses across the Netherlands.

You can automate business processes that go the same way every time and have nothing to decide: entering a new order into three systems, moving data that now runs through a spreadsheet, sending confirmations, chasing missing documents. If you are not sure a process is suitable, we map it first; that is what improving business processes is about. In more depth: which business processes you can automate, and which to leave alone.

Improving a business process is about the process itself: how it really runs, where time leaks away and which steps are unnecessary. Automating comes after and lets software do the mechanical steps. Automating a messy process only makes the mess faster. That is why every job starts with a drawing of how the work goes today; more on that under improving business processes.

You do not always need AI to automate a process. Many steps can be solved with an ordinary integration, a rule or a template, and then that is the better choice: cheaper and more predictable. AI comes in where text has to be read or understood, such as sorting a mail or reading an invoice. We always pick the simplest thing that works.

When you automate a process, judgement, exceptions and personal contact stay with people: a price for custom work, whether a complaint is justified, the conversation with an unhappy customer. The software does the work around it and prepares a draft where that helps. Which steps run unattended and which always wait for someone is written down up front, and you can change it later without a rebuild.

What happens when a step in the automation fails is decided up front: retry, stop or ask someone. Anything ambiguous lands in front of a person, with the work up to that point done. One screen shows what came in, what went through and what stopped and why; such a dashboard shows in the morning what went wrong in the night.

Goudbeek automates the work between the systems you already use, such as your mailbox, CRM, webshop and bookkeeping, instead of moving you to new software. You decide which systems the automation may write to and what it may never delete. Which connections fit your systems becomes clear during the intake.

What it costs to automate a process depends on how many steps and systems the flow touches and how much control you want around it. After a short intake you get one fixed price up front. We build one flow end to end before starting a second, so you do not pay for a big plan that still has to prove itself. It can run on managed hosting from €39 a month. If AI is involved, the AI model is billed separately by usage.

How long automating a business process takes depends on how many steps and systems the flow touches, whether those systems can exchange data and how much human review you want around it, so we don't quote a fixed number of weeks. What is fixed: we start with one flow end to end, on your own data, and only once that holds up do we start on a second. We discuss your timeline in the intake.

Automation starts with the job that eats the most hours, not with a tool. Tell us which one that is; after a short intake you get one fixed price, and then we build one working prototype on one real piece of work. You get a reply to your first message within one business day. Want to map the process yourself first? Read mapping a business process step by step.