For months, one job at UK Growth Coach stayed stubbornly manual. The event booking system, WooCommerce, needed to hand information to the CRM, Zoho, and it wasn't. Someone still had to move each booking across by hand.
UK Growth Coach had already tried Zapier - a genuinely good tool - and hit a roadblock the code couldn't clear, so it languished while they looked for another way through.
Jo co-directs UK Growth Coach, where she runs content and events. She is also a business coach, advising other owners on how to structure and run their businesses - which is why what happened next carries a practitioner's weight. The booking system was one stuck job among a wider list of admin that still had to happen regardless: calling venues, chasing quotes, website content, event emails, social posts, blogs. Each task looked like "just a quick thing", repeated often enough that a quick thing became a couple of days.
"We knew that we could improve it. We knew there were gaps. It's pinpointed the things that are actually going to do that."
The diagnosis
The assessment itemised the whole tool stack - not just what was there, but how it had grown. As a coach, Jo recognised the pattern instantly - it's the one she sees in her own clients. Systems accumulate organically: one tool added because it does the job, another because a colleague prefers it. Before long the stack has quietly ballooned into something nobody sat down and designed. None of it was broken - each tool did its job.
"You have to keep jumping from one thing to another to make it all hang together, so it still requires a person in between rather than it doing it for you."
Naming that clearly was the value itself - the same diagnosis Jo gives her own clients, turned on her own business for once. The report split the stack into quick wins to tidy up immediately, and bigger moves that carry real financial decisions and cannot be made overnight.
The running order: connecting WooCommerce to Zoho
For the booking fix, the report did not just point at a tool. It named the fix, using technology UK Growth Coach already owned, and set out the exact steps to build it - the part missing when they tried to solve it themselves.
"Not only did you say there is a solution, you've given us a solution to go and do. It's not just saying this is the plugin you need - it's the steps for how to actually do it as well."
That fix is now with the tech team to build - one of several items the report set moving. Most are honestly still in progress rather than finished:
- Booking integration, WooCommerce to Zoho - solution and steps set out; now with the tech team to build.
- Read AI / Zoom AI for meeting notes, in place of Fireflies - switched on and in testing, to confirm parity on capability and cost.
- Claude and ChatGPT for tone-of-voice content - tone-of-voice and content projects set up in both, now being tested in tandem.
- Booking plugin, Calendly versus Zoho Bookings - with the tech team, verifying Zoho Bookings can do the job first.
- Microsoft 365 migration - a bigger piece parked a while ago; now a live director-level conversation, done intentionally rather than left to drift. The team is also now exploring a full move to Zoho One, bringing much of the stack under one roof.
Only two items are temporarily parked, waiting on other decisions. Everything else is progressing.
The outcome so far
The clearest proof isn't a plan on paper - it's how much of that list is already moving. The booking fix that sat stuck for months now has named steps and sits with the tech team, and most of the rest is in motion too, with only two items parked on decisions still to come.
Microsoft 365 is the bigger example - a migration parked "a while ago" that could easily have stayed parked.
"It's that thing about being prompted that now's the time - and this is how it would work - to just kickstart that conversation... making sure it's done intentionally."
Asked directly whether she would be acting on any of this without the assessment, Jo's answer was blunt: "No, not these items."
The report identified around 7-8 hours a week - roughly 50 days a year - that Jo could get back once these systems are working for her. That figure has not been banked. It is what the report surfaced, and what Jo is confident she will reach once the roadmap now in motion is fully in place. She would put the time back into business development, coaching, and her own development.
The takeaway
As a coach, Jo has watched business owners reach for tools one at a time until the pile becomes its own kind of overwhelm. Her advice starts earlier than the tool choice: work out what you are actually trying to achieve first, then use an assessment to map the technology to it.
"Knowing something and doing something are completely different things."
"Yes, it is absolutely worth doing. I'd say they need to think about what they want to achieve with the business, not just 'it's a bit of a mess, how do I make it better?' What do they actually want to strategically achieve, so they get the most out of the assessment - the short-term, medium and long-term plan for their tech stack."
A UK Growth Coach director went through the HoursBack assessment, and most of what it found is now in motion. If your own tool stack has grown into something nobody quite designed, book an assessment and get your own running order.
Case study subject: Joanne South.