The trades I have automated from the inside
An automation pitch that does not name the workflows your trade actually runs on is a pitch for a tool. These five are the sectors I have operated in, and the pages name the workflows.
Read and answered by me, usually within the day. If a spreadsheet and a checklist would do, that is the answer you get.
Precious metalsEvery metals transaction produces paperwork: the ID, the form, the threshold check, the settlement, the record that has to be kept for years. Most dealers do it by hand and file it in a cabinet, which works until an auditor or a regulator asks for one specific transaction from two years ago.Luxury retailA luxury store sells a few high-ticket pieces a day and runs hours of paperwork around each one. Listings written by hand, repairs tracked on tickets, inventory counted twice, appraisals typed from notes. The floor is polished. The back office is a spreadsheet.ConstructionA contractor's day is the job. The evening is the paperwork: estimates, change orders, progress invoices, permit dates, photos that need filing, subcontractor paperwork. The owner does it because nobody else knows how, and the business is capped at what one person can type after dark.Legal servicesA firm bills for judgment and spends its days on routine: engagement letters, document assembly, deadline calendars, status updates, referral reports. The routine is where automation belongs, and it is also where confidentiality rules make careless automation dangerous.Real estateA real estate business runs on checklists: the listing checklist, the transaction checklist, the closing checklist, the commission reconciliation. Each one lives in a different agent's head and a different spreadsheet, and the brokerage finds out what was missed at closing.
Tell me what is in the way.
One form, read by the person who would build it. If the honest answer is a checklist and no software, that is what you will hear.