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Prepared for Northwind HR

AI & Automation Opportunities for Northwind HR

Where to start, what comes next, and what it's worth.

Prepared by Graham Marsh, dotfound
Date 4 June 2026
Current state

Where things are today.

  • No CRM. No defined process for prospecting or onboarding.
  • No working task system. Trello phased out. The current backup is remembering things at 2am.
  • File chaos. Periodic "untitled document" sweeps to bring things back in order.
  • Client context records are nascent. What exists is scattered across Drive folders, Claude projects, Slack channels, and Sarah's head.
  • Document generation (letters, handbooks, policies, contracts, SOWs) is the largest admin sink. No template system.
  • New business is effectively 0% active. Known need, blocked on time.
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The principle
Data is food for AI.
Andrew Ng Data-Centric AI, 2021
03
Direction

Strategic goals.

  • Put solid foundations in place (CRM, tasks, files, client context). Built for two, so Maya drops into a system rather than into Sarah's head. An Operations Hub.
  • Automate document generation on top of those foundations. The biggest single claw-back of delivery time.
  • Spend the freed time on new business, with AI-assisted sourcing, outreach, and pipeline.
  • Productise existing expertise into client-facing assets longer-term.
04
The opportunity map

Everything on the table, sized by impact and effort.

Click any opportunity for the detail.

HighEffort to implementLow
Deprioritise

High-effort items that need the foundations to land first. Not "never," just "not yet."

Big swings

Meaty repeatables. Where the real time and revenue lives.

Nice-to-haves

Easy wins that don't move the needle much but could be prioritised in future.

Quick wins

Prioritise these because they're simple and they take real pain away.

Low Business impact High
05
Phased roadmap

Eighteen months, in three phases.

Phase 1 creates capacity. Phase 2 spends that capacity on the highest-impact repeatable work. Phase 3 funds itself from the new-business engine standing up.

Phase 1 / months 0-3
Foundation
The unglamorous build. Put in place process and organise business context.
Phase 2 / months 4-8
Build on the foundation
The biggest repeatable delivery work, automated on top of the foundation.
Phase 3 / months 9-18
Growth and productisation
New-business engine stands up. Productised expertise helps to scale.
06
The payoff

AI + automation = your growth lever

Delivery & admin shrink, new business grows… Clients and revenue expand

Share of working hours

Active clients

07
ROI calculator

What's the size of the prize?

Drag the sliders to match your reality.

Effective hourly rateEverything below multiplies through this.
£80
Opportunity Time saved per occurrence Frequency Hours saved / mo Annual £ saved
15 min
4 / wk
 0.0 £0
5 min
6 / wk
 0.0 £0
5 min
15 / wk
 0.0 £0
30 min
6 / mo
 0.0 £0
3h
1 / qtr
 0.0 £0
4h
8 / qtr
 0.0 £0
30 min
1 / mo
 0.0 £0
60 min
1 / mo
 0.0 £0
45 min
3 / mo
 0.0 £0
Total potential 0.00 FTE equivalent Year-1 ROI − 0.0 £0

The same freed hours raise profitability on the existing book (less time at the same revenue) and free capacity for new business. (FTE basis: 1,600 productive hours a year.)

£
08
Recommendation

First Move: Build an Operations Hub on Notion.

It's the foundation everything else rides on, it solves the most visible day-to-day pain.

Today
  • Client context scattered across Drive, Claude projects, Slack, sheets etc.
  • No working task system. Backup is 2am thoughts.
  • Pipeline in a manual sheet.
  • Each account switch starts with hunting for context.
With the ops hub
  • Single hub holds Client, Project, Task, Pipeline, and Invoice databases.
  • Hub is updated by interacting with Claude.
  • Per-client context auto-populates from call transcripts, Drive, and email.
  • Tasks automatically generated from call transcripts and ad-hoc captures.
  • Kanban and due-date views surface "what's due today" without anyone asking.
  • "Open client X" produces a morning brief in seconds.

The Operations Hub is the foundation. Automatic document generation (letters, handbooks, policies, contracts, SOWs) rides on top of this layer. So does autonomous task capture from calls, and the new-business engine. Build the foundation, and everything else becomes possible.

09
Next steps

Scoping the first build.

What's in, what's out, and how we get going.

IN SCOPE FOR INITIAL BUILD
  • The Notion structure: Pipeline, Client, Project, Task, with relevant context at each layer.
  • Claude integration for client context creation and updates. You drive Claude; Claude structures and writes the records into the hub.
  • A documented working pattern.

What you walk away with: all your client data and context held in one place, kept current by you, ready for the automation layer to be built on top.

OUT OF SCOPE FOR INITIAL BUILD

The autonomous behaviours that ride on top of this foundation. These become later engagements.

  • Automated task generation from call transcripts (Claude pushing actions into the hub on its own).
  • Auto-capture of meeting notes into client records.
  • Document generation (letters, handbooks, policies, contracts, SOWs).
  • Quarterly review automation.
  • Form-driven onboarding and SOW + contract generation.
  • Timesheets-to-invoice.
  • AI-assisted email marketing and the AI-assisted prospecting engine.
Estimated timeline
Two to three weeks from start
Next step
A short scoping conversation to lock the build shape. Date to be confirmed.
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