A fireside chat on automation and AI
We sat down with Andy Hoare, who founded Neo Opsis, for a relaxed run through the questions UK business owners actually ask. No pitch, no jargon: just how this works.
In plain terms, what does Neo Opsis do?
We take the operational load off a business, the admin and the manual processes at the edges, and build it into systems the team owns. Most of our clients are good at the thing they are actually in business to do, and slowly drowning in the work around it. We map how the business really runs, then build automation, reporting and AI that fit that, and we stay until the team runs it without us. We judge the result by your numbers, not the hours we bill.
Who do you typically work with?
Small and medium-sized UK businesses, often 10 to 50 people, somewhere between having outgrown spreadsheets and not being able to justify an enterprise system. We are based in Redhill and work across Surrey, Sussex and South London in person, and remotely with the rest of the UK. The sector matters less than the symptom: talented people stuck on repetitive work.
Where do most people start?
With a conversation. There is a free tool on the site, Map my business, that walks you through one process and draws it out in about ten minutes. Seeing a process laid out is often the first time anyone in the business has, and it usually surfaces the obvious wins on its own. From there we can talk about what is worth building.
How is this different from hiring a big consultancy?
The honest version: big firms pitch their best people and deliver with their newest. You meet a partner, then a graduate runs your project. With us, the senior person in the room is the one doing the work, and still there after the build. We are deliberately small. The breadth is the point: one person who can sit with your team, frame the problem, build it, and hand it over.
And different from just buying software?
Off-the-shelf tools make you bend your business to fit them. That is fine for commodity things like email. It falls apart for the processes that make you you: the exceptions and judgement calls that live in people's heads. We build around how you actually work, rather than asking you to change how you work to suit a tool.
Everyone's talking about AI. Is it going to replace people?
Not the people worth keeping. AI is good at the boring, repetitive parts of a job, not the judgement, the relationships or the creative work. Used well, it gives your best people their time back. Used badly, it confidently makes things up. The difference is context: AI only works for your business when it understands your business, and building that understanding is most of the job.
What if AI isn't the right answer?
Then we will tell you. Sometimes a tidy spreadsheet or a simple automation beats a language model, and we would rather say so than sell you something shiny that breaks in six months. Trust is the whole relationship. We are not interested in a quick win that costs us the next ten years.
How do you charge?
It starts with a free hour, and you come out of it with a short list of specific things worth doing, not a vague strategy deck. Builds can start from a few hundred pounds. After that, we would rather be measured by what the work returns, hours saved, sales won, waste removed, than bill you for time. We win when you do.
How long does it take?
Simple automations can be live in days. Bigger pieces that touch several parts of the business take weeks to months. The slow part is almost never the technology. It is capturing how the business really runs, which is exactly the part most projects skip and then regret.
If someone's interested, what's the first step?
Map a process with the free tool, or just get in touch and tell us what is eating your week. No pitch, no obligation. Worst case, you come away with a clearer picture of your own business for free.
Ready to see how your business really runs?
Map a process in about ten minutes, free, or just start a conversation.
Map my business Get in touch