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AI workflow assessment for UK consultants - HoursBack

AI workflow assessment for UK consultancies - find the admin draining your billable hours.

For 60 minutes the client is you, and the questions are all about where the unbillable hours sit - proposals, diary tetris, status updates, the prep before every billable call. The report comes back ranked by payback, with the setup for each recommendation written out rather than left as a tool name to go and research. If you’d rather we built what it finds, we do that too.

Report in two working daysUK-registered companyMoney-back if we don't find 5+ hours a week
Book your assessment - £799 →
Sound familiar?

The work between the work that never gets billed.

You bill for your time, some engagements at a premium. Then a stretch of every week disappears to the work in between: a proposal that eats into the week and might not close, diary tetris to line up three stakeholders for one call, the weekly status update, and the prep before every billable hour with the client.

None of it appears on an invoice, so none of it is visible - but it is the reason the pipeline stalls, the reason you turn down work you could have delivered, and the reason the evenings go. By the time it shows up, it shows up as a month with less delivery in it than you planned and nothing obvious to blame.

Closing that gap takes an hour on your own firm and a plan ranked by payback rather than by novelty. Most consultancies have already sat through the AI webinar. What they have not had is somebody naming the jobs inside their own delivery where it holds up, and the ones where it does not.

What the admin costs

Run your own numbers in the admin cost calculator for consultancies, or read the full breakdown in where proposal writing time leaks in UK consultancies. If you’d like more detail before booking, the full UK pricing breakdown covers what moves the number up or down.

The assessment is £799 - less than half a day at most consulting rates.

What the assessment does for your consultancy

Your six biggest time sinks - and what we do about each one.

We map your whole consultancy in the 60-minute session, then work backwards to the drains worth fixing first. Here is what that looks like for consultants.

Proposal and SoW writing

Every opportunity needs a tailored proposal - scope, deliverables, timeline, price - and plenty of them never turn into an engagement. We take a recent proposal apart with you and work out how much of it was rebuilt from scratch rather than reused. That gap is what a draft can close, without flattening the tailoring that wins the work.

Meeting scheduling and rescheduling

Lining up client diaries, internal teams and subject-matter experts, one email at a time, until a single call is finally in the book. We trace one of those calls from first suggestion to confirmed slot and see how many emails it took, then mark which of them a booking link removes outright.

Project admin and status updates

The weekly project email, the steering deck, the action log, the timesheet. None of it bills, all of it is required. We separate the updates that restate what already happened from the ones that need a judgement call, because only the first kind can be drafted from your notes and a transcript.

Research and prep before client calls

Unbilled reading before every billable hour - the last three emails, the plan, the previous notes, the background. We work out how much of that background already exists in writing in your own files, and how a recap gets assembled from it instead of reassembled in your head on the train.

The senior-consultant inbox

Long client threads, internal escalations, partner queries, business-development follow-up - all landing in the same place, all wanting a considered reply. We group a week of your sent items by what each reply was actually doing, and the report gives you drafting prompts for the groups that keep coming back.

The capacity ceiling

Engagements you cannot take on because the admin already fills the week. Your report puts the fixes in order of delivery hours returned, so the next engagement becomes a scheduling question rather than a hiring one.

What the assessment is, and what comes after.

The assessment is a diagnostic and a plan. Within two working days of your call you get a passcode-protected report: the AI and automation opportunities we have found for your consultancy, named tools with costs and setup time, step-by-step recipes, a prompt library, an impact-versus-effort ranking, and ROI worked out on your real numbers. It is written in plain English so you can act on it - no technical background needed.

The report is written so you can act on it yourself. If you’d rather we did the work, we build it: if the report flags something worth building - a proposal-drafting agent, say - we scope it with you and build it as an automation or an AI agent, in your own accounts (agents start from £949). If you would rather implement the quick wins yourself with someone beside you, an Implementation Session (£349, 90 minutes) is there for that. Once something is live, ongoing support keeps it running.

Most clients start with the assessment. If you already know the job you want built, you can go straight to a scoping call.

Client case studies

The kind of result we publish.

Real clients, in their own words - the full story, what we found, and the measurable change in their week.

Headshot of Joanne South
Joanne South
Co-director, UK Growth Coach

“Knowing something and doing something are completely different things.”

Read Joanne’s story →
Projected~7-8 hrs/week
Identified in the report, achievable once the roadmap is in place

See all case studies

Joanne South case study
Common questions

Questions consultancies ask us.

We do confidential client work. Is it safe to put anything into AI tools?
Yes, with the right setup. If we build something, it runs in your own accounts, and before you choose we tell you which AI provider it uses and that it may process data outside the UK.
Will AI-written proposals sound generic and cost us the work?
Not if they are set up properly. The win comes from AI drafting the structural work - scope, timeline, boilerplate - from your brief, so you spend your time on the tailoring that actually lands the engagement. We show you exactly where the line sits between the draft and your judgement.
We already use Notion and ChatGPT. Is there anything left to find?
That's what the session finds out. The leaks worth checking - proposal turnaround, call prep, the status-update treadmill - sit in how work moves between people and tools, and the report lists what you already pay for and aren't using.
Is £799 worth it for a consultancy like ours?
At a mid-tier billing rate the assessment costs less than half a day, and it is guaranteed: if your report does not show at least 5 hours a week worth reclaiming, the £799 comes straight back. Everything in it was measured on your own engagements rather than borrowed from a sector average.
Choose your package

One payment. A written plan, a live review call, and someone checking in to make sure it happens.

A diagnostic session, personalised report, a live review call, and follow-up support. One payment for the assessment. Anything we build afterwards is quoted separately, and only if you want it.

Find out where your consultancy's hours actually go.

Book a 60-minute diagnostic. Get a report built around your consultancy within two working days, a live review call where we walk you through it, and follow-up support. Money back if it doesn't show at least 5 hours a week worth reclaiming.

Book your assessment →