From email chains to zero admin: the project we’re proudest of this year

When this client first walked us through how their business worked, we actually took notes on the back of a printout because we couldn’t believe how many steps there were.

They’re a due diligence and compliance firm here in South Africa. Their clients have to keep certain information updated, regularly. And every single update went like this.

Someone in the office emailed the client a form. The client filled it in, sometimes in Word, sometimes as a PDF, occasionally by hand and then scanned at an angle. Then they emailed it back, usually after a reminder. Or two.

Then the real work started. Someone reformatted it into the firm’s layout. Added the right logos. Renamed it to match their naming system. Found last month’s version, moved it into an archive folder, and uploaded the new one to the client’s area on the website.

For every client. Every month.

None of it was difficult. That’s the thing. It was just relentless, and every hand-off was a chance for the wrong file or the wrong month to slip through.

What happens now

Now the client logs into their own secure area on the website and fills in the information there, once. When they hit submit, the website formats it into the firm’s document, puts the right logos on it, names it properly, moves last month’s version down into the archive and publishes the new one. It also keeps a record of who submitted what and when.

Nobody in the office touches it. No emails go back and forth. We still get a bit of a kick out of watching it work.

What actually changed for them

The time saving was the obvious one. But when we spoke to them afterwards, that wasn’t what they mentioned first.

They talked about not having to chase people anymore. About every document finally looking the same. About being able to show exactly who submitted what, which in compliance really matters. And about being able to take on more clients without needing to hire someone to push paper around.

Their clients like it too. Turns out people would much rather update something at 11pm on a Sunday than wait for an email to arrive.

Nobody in the office touches it. No emails go back and forth.

How we built it

People are often surprised that it’s all WordPress. We used solid, well-supported tools for forms, PDF generation and member logins, and wrote custom code to tie each step to the next. There’s no expensive custom software sitting in the background that only one developer understands, and the team manages it from the same dashboard they already knew.

Could your business do this?

If part of your week involves sending a document out, waiting for it to come back, fixing it and filing it, we’d put money on it being automatable. Tell us about your process and we’ll let you know what’s possible.