SW labs: process automation for small businesses in Aschaffenburg

What you do by hand every week doesn’t have to stay that way.

I look at what happens several times a week in your business and rebuild those steps so they run without you. From Aschaffenburg, for businesses in the region.

First call

Free, about 45 minutes. You’ll know more about your own week afterward than you did before.

Direct

You talk to the person who builds it. There’s nobody else here.

This is what doing it by hand looks like.

Orders from the inbox.

An email comes in, someone opens it, reads off the quantity and the item and types both into the other program. Twenty times a day, every day, and once a week somebody makes a typo.

Appointments in two places.

The appointment sits in the calendar and again on the whiteboard in the workshop. When it moves, someone updates both. Or just one, and then somebody drives out there for nothing.

Twelve almost identical invoices.

End of the month, the same line items for the same customers, only the date and the amount change. Half an hour per invoice, if nothing gets in the way.

The paperwork after the job.

Photos off the phone into the folder, hours into the list, a report to the customer, the invoice into the accounting program. Four places, the same details, typed in again every time.

If something came to mind while reading that works the same way in your business, that’s what the first call is for.

Four questions before I build anything.

How often, times how long?

Five minutes a day sounds like nothing. It’s twenty hours a year. Three hours once a quarter sounds like a lot, and it’s twelve. Do the math, the result surprises most people.

Does it follow fixed rules?

If a person has to make a call every time, it isn’t automation. What I can build then is the groundwork, so the decision takes less time.

Is the data already digital?

No program can read what’s on a notepad at the counter. Getting it into digital form comes first. That’s a separate project with its own price, and I say so up front.

Can your software talk to other programs?

Some programs hand data off to others on their own. Older ones often can’t. A program from 2009 usually has no way to get data out. Days of work hang on this, so I check it before I quote a price.

Some things don’t pay off, and I’ll say so.

A process that comes up twice a year is done faster by hand than with a program that needs maintaining.

The four steps.

Call.

I go through your week with you, point by point. One question runs through all of it: what do you find yourself doing over and over? About 45 minutes, free, and there’s nothing to sign.

Proposal.

A fixed price for one named process. It says what runs by itself afterward, what still happens by hand and what it costs per month.

Build.

I build it and show you where it stands before it goes live. For a single process that’s usually days, not months.

Operation.

It runs. If something changes at your end, whether new software, a new process or a new hire, I move with it.

What I build runs on components you’ll find everywhere, and it can be moved somewhere else later without being rebuilt. Where it runs is settled in the proposal. Usually that’s with SW labs, so you don’t have to deal with it.

From €2,000. You know what for, up front.

Put that number next to what’s further up the page: the work you do by hand every week. How much time that costs you, you know better than I do, and we go through it in the first call anyway.

One-time

A fixed price for a named process. What it costs depends on how many programs hang off it and whether they’ll talk to each other. I name it before I start, and it holds as long as the scope holds.

Monthly

From €25 for running it and keeping it current. I keep what I built working and adjust small things when something changes at your end.

Not included

A server of your own, paid third-party services, bigger rebuilds. Whatever applies to you is in the proposal, not on the invoice later.

The first 30 days

If something doesn’t work the way I described it, I fix it. At no extra charge.

SW labs is me, for now.

Felix Winkel

Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, Germany

I’m Felix. I build systems I actually enjoy using. Not ones that shave five minutes off something because it happens to be possible. Mostly it comes down to friction: where does a piece of information need to go, and which parts of that need no human hand at all. There are new tools every week. Half the work is the groundwork. The other half is finding out which of those tools hold up day to day.

You talk to the person who builds it.

You write, I answer. Nobody sits in between. It’s a one-person operation.

You pay for the work, nothing else.

No office in a prime location, no sales department. What the proposal lists is the time that goes into your process.

Your process sets the shape.

I don’t have an off-the-shelf template you’d have to fit into. And if something doesn’t pay off, I say so before you pay for it.

What clients ask me.

What does it cost?

From €2,000 for one process, plus from €25 a month for running it and keeping it current. What it comes to in your case depends on how many programs are involved and what the solution runs on. I name the price before we start, not after, and it holds as long as the scope holds.

How long does something like this take?

A single process usually takes days to a few weeks. What stretches the timeline is almost never the building. It’s getting access to your programs.

What if my process doesn’t pay off at all?

Then I say so in the first call and you’ve spent an hour. Four questions decide it. They’re further up this page, and you can go through them yourself beforehand.

What you do by hand every week doesn’t have to stay that way.