Founders and directors of firms of 1 to 50 people
Where admin has quietly become part of the leadership job.
Business automation consultant · London
A business automation consultant for founder led firms in London.
I find the work that eats your week without needing your expertise, and I build the systems that take it off your hands.
At a glance
- Who
- Anne Peire, founder of 10PM
- Where
- London, working with clients across the UK and beyond
- What
- Business process automation for founder led firms and professional services
- Where it starts
- The Time Leak Audit, from £950 excluding VAT
The work
What a business automation consultant actually does
The title covers a lot of ground, so here is the specific version.
I look at how your business really runs, not how the process document says it runs. I find the tasks that happen often and need no judgement, put a number on what they cost you over a year, and then build the systems that remove or shrink them.
I do not sell strategy decks or tool recommendations. What I hand over is a working system, tested against your real cases, documented, and operated by your team without me.
Most founders I meet are not short of ambition. They are short of the hours that ambition needs.
Who it fits
The pattern matters more
than the sector
The common denominator is not the industry. It is expertise being consumed by work a well built system could handle.
Professional services firms billing by the hour
Where every hour on admin is an hour that cannot be billed.
Agency and practice owners with repeating client cycles
Onboarding, reporting and billing that look the same every month.
Businesses where the process lives in one person’s head
It works, until that person is away.
More detail by audience: founders & small teams professional services firms solicitors architects consultants agency founders
A straight answer
Where AI fits, and where it does not
AI is a tool in the box, not the box.
It earns its place where the work involves reading, drafting or classifying language: pulling structured information out of a document someone emailed you, preparing a first draft for a human to approve, sorting incoming requests so the right person sees them first.
It is the wrong tool where the rules are already clear. Creating an invoice from recorded activity, raising a direct debit, sending a reminder when a payment is late, moving a record to the next stage: none of that needs a model. It needs a reliable connection between two systems, which is cheaper, faster and will not surprise you.
So the honest answer is that most of what I build is not AI. It is plumbing, well laid. Where AI genuinely helps, I use it, and I tell you which part of the process depends on it and what happens when it gets something wrong.
MakeZapiern8nHubSpot
NotionAirtableXeroGoCardless
Digital signature toolsAI assisted document handling
The right tool is the one that solves your problem inside the systems you already pay for. The diagnosis comes first, the tool second.
Evidence
What this has changed
for real businesses
≈12 → <1hours of admin a month, at a payroll firm serving around 200 client companies
Premium Paye
Invoicing rebuilt by hand, direct debits keyed one client at a time, paperwork chased by email. Three connected processes took the manual work out of the month.
Read the case study2,311relationships that could bring in new business, with no reliable view of which needed attention
Founder led recruitment firm, London
The relationship database lived across a spreadsheet, email and one person’s notes. A priority model plus automation turned it into something the team reads every morning.
Read the case studyBackground
Why I see this pattern quickly
I spent more than fifteen years in B2B technology, including leadership roles at Fountain and Soldo, and time at Verizon after it acquired the company I was with. I know what operational friction looks like from inside a fast growing business.
I have also been on the other side. I founded and ran an after school nanny agency in London, employing the nannies. Hours were counted automatically in Deputy, connected through to Xero, with direct debits collected from families and payments made out to the nannies. I built that chain because I was the one who would otherwise have spent every Sunday on it.
My framework for the hire or automate decision ran as a full page article in London Business Matters, the magazine of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in the July and August 2026 issue.
How it works
Three paid phases.
You decide after each one.
Each phase has its own deliverables and its own fixed fee, so you always know what you are buying before you buy the next thing.
Time Leak Audit
I map how the work happens today, estimate the hours that could be recovered and rank the opportunities against your goals. Under two hours of your time.
From £950 · fixed fee · excluding VATProcess Design
A working session with your team, then detailed mapping: the steps, the data, the business rules and the exceptions that decide how the build behaves.
Separately scoped · fixed fee · excluding VATImplementation and handover
I build it in the tools you already use, test it against the agreed scenarios, document it and show your team how to run it without me.
Fixed project price · quoted after Process DesignBefore any of it, a free fifteen minute conversation about your business. Bring a recurring frustration. We will work out whether there is anything here worth diagnosing.
Due diligence
How to choose a business
automation consultant
- Do they understand your kind of business, or only automation? Onboarding a legal client is not onboarding an agency client.
- Do they map your process before naming a tool? Anyone who opens with a product demo is selling that product.
- Do they work with the systems you already pay for, rather than proposing a migration?
- Will your team be able to run it without them? If it breaks the day they leave, you rented a fix.
- Is the fee fixed and agreed before the work starts?
Ask these of anyone you consider, including me.
Before we talk
Questions founders ask
before hiring anyone.
Something else on your mind?
Email me directly.
Do I need to know what to automate before we talk?
No. Bring a problem, a frustration or a part of the business that takes too much of your attention. Working out which change is worth making is part of my job. Sometimes the answer is to simplify a process before automating anything.
Will you replace the tools we already use?
I start with what you have. Where your current tools can do the job well, I build on them. If a limitation makes a change worthwhile, I explain the options and any additional cost before we agree the work.
How much of my time does the diagnostic need?
The Time Leak Audit is designed to need under two hours of your time. I carry out the mapping, the analysis and the report. We agree at the start which conversations and information are needed.
What if automation is not the right answer?
Then I say so. The diagnostic exists to help you decide which changes are worth making. Its recommendations may well be to simplify a process, clarify who owns what, or make better use of a tool you already pay for.
Do you work with businesses outside London?
Yes. I am based in London and most of my clients are here, but the work is done remotely as much as in person. Location matters less than whether the pattern fits.
What does the fixed price cover?
Each paid phase has its own agreed scope and fee, excluding VAT. The implementation proposal follows Process Design and sets out the build, the testing, the documentation, the timeline and the handover. Software subscriptions and any ongoing support are identified separately. If the scope changes, we agree the extra work and its price before it starts.
Your business
Where is your week going?
Fifteen minutes, no charge, no pitch. Bring one process that annoys you and we will look at it together.
15 minutes · No charge
Prefer to write? [email protected]