01 — What you told us
The picture from the call
Captured from your own words so the audit picks up exactly where the call left off.
- Quoting is the #1 bottleneck. “30 materials in one little sign… pulling that data across, getting quotes from different suppliers, pulling the tender package apart, finding all the signs within the drawings” — all keyed into FileMaker by hand.
- Your data lives in four places at once. Trello (job tracking) + FileMaker (quoting/accounting) + email + the server for files and designs. “We input into FileMaker, into our server, into Trello — we do double up, triple up.”
- Accounts & bookkeeping is the one department you don’t run yourself — you suspect there’s repetition there worth a look.
- You’re boutique by design. ~20 staff, 20 years in, ~10%/yr growth target. Custom-by-nature work earning premium margins — the goal isn’t scale, it’s freeing up time on the bits that don’t make money.
- You’ve already had a look at this yourself. You explored Claude on your own and hit the wall of “not my expertise” — which is exactly where we come in.
- Half the team is the factory. The making itself isn’t automatable. Everything we’re looking at is the office side — the ~10 people around quoting, project management, design, and accounts.
02 — How it works
Three steps, in order
You don’t commit to a big build up front. The audit comes first, then you decide what to implement — one piece at a time.
STEP 1
The audit
Short, structured interviews with the people who run each part of Fremont. We map your end-to-end operation and find where AI saves time and where it doesn’t belong.
STEP 2
The priority matrix
Every opportunity ranked by impact vs effort. You see exactly what’s cheap to build, high-impact, and worth doing first — with the cost of each.
STEP 3
Phased build
We build the highest-value, lowest-cost item first as proof. It works, you see the return, then you choose what’s next. No single large bill.
03 — Tailored to Fremont
Where we’d expect to find the time
Real numbers come from the interviews — but based on what you described, these are the obvious places we’d dig.
- The quoting workflow. Extracting every sign from a tender pack, pulling supplier costs, building a 30-material BOM by hand. This is where AI assistants do the heaviest lifting — reading the drawings, suggesting BOMs from past similar jobs, drafting the FileMaker entries for you to approve.
- The four-system data sprawl. One source of truth between Trello, FileMaker, email and the server — so a new job lands once and flows through, rather than being re-keyed three times.
- The accounts & bookkeeping side. The one area you don’t run yourself, and almost always where the quiet repetitive work hides — invoice matching, reconciliation, supplier statement chasing.
- Knowing what to ignore. Just as important: where AI is dangerous in a custom-design business. We’ll tell you which bits of the work should stay human — design judgement, client conversations, final QA — so you don’t spend on the wrong things.
04 — The method
Three layers, in order. You can’t skip one.
Most failed AI projects skip straight to the top layer before the two underneath are ready. The audit makes sure that doesn’t happen at Fremont.
1
Foundation — is your data AI-ready?
Trello, FileMaker, email, the server. We check what state it’s in and what needs cleaning up before AI can use it.
2
Systems — can your tools connect?
FileMaker is customised to your business — great for control, but we need to confirm how cleanly it talks to other systems. Where things don’t connect, we tell you plainly.
3
Intelligence — where AI actually goes in
Only once the foundation and systems are sound does AI get implemented — assistants, automations, agents. Quoting is the obvious first target.
05 — Proof from similar businesses
What our audits typically find
Anonymised under NDA. We’ve not audited a signage manufacturer yet — but we’ve audited three businesses that look a lot like Fremont in different ways.
A custom-manufacturing business
~1,350 hrs/yrrecoverable
What we found: capable, expensive software that didn’t talk to itself. Projects/orders re-keyed by hand across three systems, reconciliation in spreadsheets, invoices double-paid because nothing cross-checked. The person who manually moved data between systems had just left — and the whole process broke.
How it maps to Fremont: Trello + FileMaker + email + server is the same pattern at smaller scale. The fix is making them talk — so a job lands once and flows through, instead of being re-entered three times.
A founder-led custom-services business
~1,160 hrs/yrrecoverable
What we found: the founder was the bottleneck on a custom-by-nature workflow — every new client needed weeks of intensive discovery and quoting that only she could do. Manual write-ups took two full days per client. Quality assurance broke down whenever the founders got busy.
How it maps to Fremont: you’ve done every role in the business — that’s a strength, but it’s also a cap. AI assistants on quoting + estimating let you stay in control of the judgement calls while taking the manual data work off you.
A B2B with reps and 4 disconnected systems
~7,100 hrs/yrrecoverable
What we found: four systems that staff had to cross-reference every day — confirmed “not working” on the call. No central view of any account. People doubling up everywhere just to keep records straight.
How it maps to Fremont: the “we double up, triple up” problem — same root cause. Fix the data layer first, then the AI on top of it actually pays off.
06 — What happens after the audit
Piece by piece. Never one big bill.
You stay in control of spend at every step.
- We start with the cheapest, highest-impact build. Typically an AI assistant on quoting or a connector between two of your systems — a quick win that proves the value fast.
- You see it working before deciding anything else. No theory. A real result you can measure.
- Then you choose what’s next. Each build is approved and priced on its own. Stop or continue — entirely your call.
- If the priority matrix says “don’t do it”, we say so. You walk away with a clear “don’t bother” list as well as a “do this next” list.
07 — Pricing
Rough costs
All figures in AUD. The audit is the only thing you commit to now — everything else is scoped after the priority matrix lands, and approved one build at a time.
| Build | What it is | Typical cost |
|---|
| The audit (Fremont) |
2 interview sessions, full operational audit, live portal, priority matrix. 3× money-back guaranteed. |
$3,000 AUD |
| AI co-worker plugins |
AI assistants inside the tools you already use — e.g. drafting quotes from drawings, answering supplier queries, clearing admin. Fastest return, lowest cost. |
$2,000–$4,000 per build |
| AI process automations |
AI that moves your data for you — orders, quotes and job records flowing between Trello, FileMaker and your server with no manual re-keying. |
$4,000–$15,000 per build |
| AI agents & decisioning |
AI that does the thinking — reading tender packages and surfacing every sign, suggesting BOMs from past similar jobs, flagging quotes that look off. |
$15,000–$40,000 per build |
Most businesses start with a single AI co-worker plugin (the quoting assistant in your case is the obvious one) and grow from there. You only ever pay for the pieces you approve.
08 — Scope for Fremont
What it actually looks like for you
Because you run most departments yourself, your audit is unusually fast — we don’t need 7–10 interviews to cover the business.
Interviews
2 sessions
You for the business, plus accounts
Turnaround
~4–5 days
From kick-off to priority matrix
Investment
$3,000 AUD
3× money-back guaranteed
09 — For your GM
The fair questions a GM should ask
If you’re running this past your GM, these are the answers they’ll want.
What’s the actual risk?
$3,000 AUD with a 3× money-back guarantee. If we don’t find $9K+ of recoverable waste, you get the money back and keep the deliverables.
How much time does this take from us?
2 interview sessions. About an hour each. That’s the entire team commitment.
Are we locked into anything afterwards?
No. You can take the blueprint to any other agency or do nothing at all. We’d rather you choose us because of what the audit shows — not because you’re trapped.
Are you going to recommend replacing staff?
No. The audit’s job is to find the manual, repetitive work that’s eating your team’s time — so they can focus on design, clients, and the work that actually earns the margin.
What if AI doesn’t fit our business?
The audit tells you exactly where it doesn’t belong, too. A custom-design business has work that should stay human — we’ll be explicit about which bits.
How do we keep our data private?
Your audit is hosted privately on Google Drive — not on a public URL. No one outside your team and ours sees it.