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Automation Showroom

A company is not a process. It is a network.

The showroom shows single workflows. This page shows how they connect: which data travels from department to department, where handoffs stall and where a person decides.

A model company. The green dots are demo workflows from the showroom, not client projects.

Follow one order What works in general

Events travel from department to department: an enquiry becomes an order, the order a delivery note, the delivery note an invoice. Every green dot is a workflow you can open as a demo in the showroom.

Map of a model company: departments, demo workflows and how they connect

Shared data

Customers · Products · Suppliers · Orders · Employees

  1. Customer
  2. Ticket (from Customer to Service)

  3. Service

  4. Follow-up (from Service to Sales & marketing)

  5. Sales & marketing

    Also: Enquiry (from Customer to Sales & marketing)

  6. Order (from Sales & marketing to Warehouse & shipping)

  7. Warehouse & shipping

    Also: Delivery note (from Supplier to Warehouse & shipping), Goods receipt (from Warehouse & shipping to Accounting)

  8. Demand (from Warehouse & shipping to Purchasing)

  9. Purchasing

    • Reorder proposal
    • Place the order
    • Read the confirmation

    Also: Purchase order (from Purchasing to Supplier)

  10. PO data (from Purchasing to Accounting)

  11. Accounting

    Also: Goods receipt (from Warehouse & shipping to Accounting), Payment (from Bank to Accounting)

  12. Approval (from Accounting to Management)

  13. Management

  14. Audit trail (from IT & privacy to Management)

  15. IT & privacy

  16. New hire (from People to IT & privacy)

  17. People

  • Demo in the showroom
  • typical task, no demo of its own
  • a person decides along the way

Not on the map: the medical letter. It belongs in a clinic, not in this model company, and is in the showroom.

Four colleagues at a large table laying out a workflow on brown paper with sticky notes and arrows.

Staged scene

Monday, 9:00 am

A firm laid out on brown paper.

Who passes what to whom, and where does it get stuck? Usually where two departments meet.

Automate one workflow on its own and you often just move the queue. The expensive places are between departments.

One order through the whole company.

Ten stations, five departments, one record. At each station you see what runs on its own, where a person decides and which data travels on to the next station.

EnquiryStation 1 of 10

  1. Enquiry

    Sales & marketing · Station 1 of 10

    An enquiry arrives by form, email or phone. Before anyone reads it, it has been sorted and has reached the right person.

    Runs on its own

    • Capture the enquiry, whatever the channel
    • Add company details
    • Score the fit and assign it

    A person decides

    Whether and how fast someone calls back.

    Travels on

    • Customer Sample Metalworks Ltd
    • Need 200 wall brackets
    Demo: qualify enquiries

  2. Quote

    Sales & marketing · Station 2 of 10

    The quote is built from products and the price list, not from the last quote that someone rewrites.

    Runs on its own

    • Build the quote from products and price list
    • Remind the team to follow up after a few days

    A person decides

    Approve a discount above the agreed limit.

    Travels on

    • Line items 3 products
    • Quote total €4,180
    Similar: document approval

  3. Order

    Sales & marketing · Station 3 of 10

    When the customer says yes, the quote becomes an order. No retyping, it is the same data. The warehouse sees it the same moment.

    Runs on its own

    • Create the order from the quote
    • Check stock
    • Send the order confirmation

    A person decides

    Commit to a delivery date when stock is short.

    Travels on

    • Order number A-10418
    • Delivery week 46
    Demo: shop order handling

  4. Purchase order to the supplier

    Purchasing · Station 4 of 10

    If stock is short, a reorder proposal appears. Purchasing sees which customer order it is for.

    Runs on its own

    • Reorder proposal from demand and minimum stock
    • Send the purchase order to the supplier
    • Read the supplier's confirmation and check the date

    A person decides

    Choose the supplier, approve larger orders.

    Travels on

    • PO number B-2207
    • Supplier Example Steel Co

    The showroom has no demo of its own for this yet.

  5. Goods receipt

    Warehouse & shipping · Station 5 of 10

    The goods arrive with a delivery note. Nobody retypes it: it is read and laid against the purchase order.

    Runs on its own

    • Read the delivery note and match it to the purchase order
    • Book the stock
    • Tell sales the goods are in

    A person decides

    What happens with a shortfall or damage.

    Travels on

    • Delivery note LS-5531
    • Delivered 200 of 200
    Same technique: read invoice data

  6. Shipping

    Warehouse & shipping · Station 6 of 10

    Shipping label, tracking number, message to the customer: all from the order, no new form. If the customer asks anyway, a chatbot can answer from the same data.

    Runs on its own

    • Create the shipping label
    • Send the tracking number to the customer
    • Write the status back into the order

    A person decides

    Partial delivery, yes or no.

    Travels on

    • Tracking number 00340 55217
    Demo: shop order handling Demo: AI chatbot

  7. Invoices, out and in

    Accounting · Station 7 of 10

    The outgoing invoice is built from order and delivery note. The supplier's invoice is checked against purchase order and goods receipt. That only works because all three documents carry the same numbers.

    Runs on its own

    • Build the outgoing invoice from order and delivery note and send it as an e-invoice
    • Read the incoming invoice and check it against purchase order and goods receipt

    A person decides

    Settle differences, approve invoices above the limit.

    Travels on

    • Invoice number R-30118
    • Due in 14 days
    Demo: invoice checking

  8. Payments and dunning

    Accounting · Station 8 of 10

    Every morning the bank statement is laid against the open items. Whoever has paid gets no reminder.

    Runs on its own

    • Match payments to open invoices
    • Prepare reminders and dunning levels by fixed rules

    A person decides

    Approval before a reminder with a fee, goodwill for regular customers.

    Travels on

    • Payment received
    • Dunning level none
    Demo: dunning

  9. Bookkeeping

    Accounting · Station 9 of 10

    The documents land in accounting with a suggested entry and in the archive with all their references. The tax adviser gets what they need, without a shoebox.

    Runs on its own

    • Suggest an entry per document
    • File the document linked to order, delivery note and payment
    • Hand the data to the accounting software or the tax adviser

    A person decides

    Account assignment when in doubt, month-end closing.

    Travels on

    • Entry suggested, checked
    Demo: incoming invoices end to end

  10. Report

    Management · Station 10 of 10

    Because every station passed its data on, the weekly report only has to add it up: orders, open items, delivery times. Nobody builds it by hand.

    Runs on its own

    • Combine figures from every station
    • Send the report every week
    • Flag anything out of line

    A person decides

    What follows from it.

    Travels on

    • Weekly report up to date
    More: connecting Power BI
A young man packs a parcel in a small warehouse while a label printer prints the shipping label.
Shipping: the label prints as soon as the order is released. Nobody types the address again.
A bookkeeper leans back relaxed next to a stack of receipts and a laptop showing a spreadsheet.
Accounting: the invoice comes from the same data as the order. All that is left on the desk is what a person has to check.

Staged scenes, not client projects.

What can be automated in any company.

Departments differ, the building blocks hardly do. Twelve that show up in almost every workflow: each with an example from the showroom and the point where it stops paying off.

12 building blocks

  • Shows up in: Accounting · Purchasing · Warehouse & shipping

    Lay two sources side by side and show only the differences: invoice against purchase order, payment against open items.

  • Shows up in: Accounting · Warehouse & shipping · Purchasing · People

    AI reads invoices, delivery notes or forms and turns them into data a system can work with.

  • Shows up in: Management · Accounting · Purchasing · Sales & marketing

    The workflow pauses, puts everything in front of the responsible person and continues after their decision.

  • Shows up in: People · Sales & marketing · Service · Management

    The right person learns at the right moment that it is their turn, instead of having to ask.

  • Shows up in: Warehouse & shipping · Sales & marketing · Accounting · IT & privacy

    What is created in one system lands in the next without retyping: shop, inventory, accounting.

  • Shows up in: Accounting · People · IT & privacy · Purchasing

    Payment terms, early-payment discount, probation, go-live: the workflow knows the deadline and speaks up before it.

  • Shows up in: Management · Sales & marketing · Accounting

    Figures from several systems are combined and sent regularly, without anyone building a spreadsheet.

  • Shows up in: Service · Sales & marketing

    Incoming enquiries are recognised, sorted and, where there is a clear answer, answered directly.

  • Shows up in: Service · IT & privacy · People

    Questions from the team are answered from your own documents, with the source.

  • Shows up in: Service · People · Sales & marketing

    Messages appear in the recipient's language, with your own glossary.

  • Shows up in: IT & privacy · People

    Accounts appear when someone joins and disappear when they leave, each with the right permissions.

  • Shows up in: IT & privacy · Management · Accounting

    Every step is recorded: who decided what and when. For audits, access requests and the question why something went the way it did.

Where do you start?

Not with a tool and not with the whole map, but with the handoff that costs the most. To find it, I built tools of my own.

Full disclosure: every tool in this section comes from me and balane GmbH.

  1. Report

    Friction log

    App for iPhone and Android

    Your team notes what gets in the way, in the moment, in seconds. After one week the app projects what that costs per month.

    Get the app

  2. Measure

    Self-check

    in the browser

    Places one workflow. You see the short summary straight away, without an email address. For the detailed report the check asks for one.

    Start the self-check

    FlowVisual

    Desktop app for macOS and Windows

    Runs locally, no cloud. You capture the workflow the way you would describe it in conversation, and a Monte Carlo stress test shows the bottleneck. Plus utilisation per team, a process handbook with RACI and the business case in euros. There is a free version.

    Mac App Store Microsoft Store More about FlowVisual

  3. Cut

    Flowrefy

    Method

    FLOW measures which step really costs money: find, lay bare, observe, weigh. REFY cleans up: reduce, enable, fit, yield. Only what survives that gets automated.

    The Flowrefy method

  4. Automate

    Showroom

    Demo workflows

    What remains runs like the workflows in the showroom, with your systems and your rules.

    To the showroom

Which handoff costs you the most?

Find out yourself, with the self-check or the friction log. Or we look at it together.

Start the self-checkGet the friction log Arrange a call

A model, not a promise.

Everything on this page is a model company: demo workflows, made-up sample data, assumed waiting times. No client projects, no measured results. I am not certified for hospital information systems, gematik or DATEV. And there is no greenfield strategy here: the starting point is the workflows you already have.

All demos in the showroom How I work