Faster, calmer responses
- • Shorter time to first reply on new enquiries.
- • Simple questions answered or triaged automatically.
- • Staff only step in where a human decision is needed.
Automation & AI for small & growing teams
Automation & AI that tidy the messy bits first.
South Coast Apps designs small, safe automation and AI assistants that help local teams respond faster, drop fewer balls and spend less time copying and pasting. We fix the workflow first, then add AI where it clearly earns its keep. Everything starts with a £49.50 Cloud & Systems Consultation.
Based near Chichester, working mainly across Sussex and Hampshire – from Bournemouth and Southampton
to Portsmouth, Worthing and Brighton.
Book a £49.50 consultation
See how it fits with websites
45-minute video or phone session. If you continue with a project, the fee is usually credited against the first phase.
Who this is for
We're a good fit if your team is busy, your tools are decent, but work still falls through the cracks.
- • Owner-led teams where the same questions land in the inbox every day.
- • Clinics, trades, property and service businesses juggling multiple systems.
- • Teams living in spreadsheets or chat apps to track work and hand-offs.
- • People who want to use AI carefully, with clear guardrails and human review.
If you mainly need someone to fix staff laptops, printers or office Wi-Fi, we're not the right partner. If you want your website, inboxes and cloud tools to quietly work together, we probably are.
Outcomes
What Automation & AI can do for you
We agree simple, measurable outcomes before we build anything. Most South Coast projects aim at a mix of these:
Hours back each week
- • Less copying between systems and spreadsheets.
- • Fewer “just checking where this is up to?” messages.
- • Clear, shared view of who owns which step.
Cleaner data and reporting
- • Fewer typos and missing fields.
- • Regular reports without weekend spreadsheet work.
- • History you can actually trust when making decisions.
Standards
How we keep things safe and maintainable
Automation and AI should reduce stress, not add to it. We build with guardrails and sensible defaults from day one.
- ✅ Clear diagrams of how data moves between tools and services.
- ✅ Role-based access so the right people can see and change the right things.
- ✅ Logs for key actions so you can see what happened, when and why.
- ✅ “Human in the loop” where decisions have real-world impact.
- ✅ Preference for UK/EU hosting and reputable providers.
- ✅ Documented fallbacks if an external service has a wobble.
- ✅ Plain-English notes on privacy, retention and opt-outs for staff and customers.
- ✅ Handovers and Loom walkthroughs so you’re not reliant on one person’s memory.
Ballpark budgets
Example Automation & AI project shapes
Final pricing depends on the Cloud & Systems Consultation, but these examples show where most South Coast projects land. Platform fees for tools like Zapier, Make or AI APIs are billed separately at cost.
Workflow tidy-up
Typically £395–£895
One or two painful manual processes you want off your plate.
- Map the current steps and find the real bottlenecks
- Join up a couple of tools (e.g. forms → CRM, jobs → invoices)
- Add alerts so things don’t quietly get stuck
AI-assisted enquiries & support
Typically £995–£1,995
Teams handling repeated questions where faster first replies would really help.
- AI that suggests replies; humans approve and send
- Lead-qualifying questions before a human picks it up
- Summaries and notes pushed into your existing tools
Systems & reporting automation
From £1,495+
Established teams with CRMs, job systems or accounts tools that don’t quite talk to each other.
- Join up jobs, CRM and accounts so hand-offs are automatic
- Scheduled reports instead of spreadsheet copying and pasting
- Room for phased AI add-ons once the basics are stable
These are examples, not rigid packages. During the consultation we'll confirm whether a small fixed-scope pilot, a one-off tidy-up, or a phased programme makes most sense for you.
Process
How a typical Automation & AI project runs
We keep things calm and incremental. Fix one workflow properly, prove the value, then decide what's next.
- 1Cloud & Systems Consultation
45-minute call to map how work moves today: tools, people, hand-offs and pain points. We'll agree what “good” would look like, and where automation or AI might help.
- 2Plan & fixed pilot scope
You get a short plan with a proposed pilot: which workflow, which tools, success metrics and a fixed price. We keep the first phase deliberately small and focused.
- 3Build, test & run for real
We configure the automations or AI assistant, test with a small group, and then run it in the real world for a short period while we keep a close eye on the numbers.
- 4Review & decide next steps
We review what changed: hours saved, response times, error rates. Then you decide whether to pause, tweak or expand into other workflows – with clear costs either way.
FAQs
Automation & AI questions we're often asked
What does the £49.50 Cloud & Systems Consultation cover for automation and AI?
We look at how work currently flows through your business – from enquiries and bookings to jobs and invoicing. We’ll identify where time is being wasted, what’s realistic to automate, and where AI might help. After the session, you get a short plan with options and next steps. If you go ahead with an automation or AI project, the fee is usually credited against your first invoice.
Where does AI make sense – and where doesn’t it?
AI is great for triaging enquiries, suggesting replies, summarising notes, and pulling signal out of messy text. It’s not suitable for final legal or clinical decisions, sign-offs with big financial impact, or anything that genuinely needs a specialist human. We’ll help you draw that line clearly so AI is a helper, not a risk.
Do you replace staff with automation?
No. The aim is to reduce boring, repetitive work so your team can focus on higher-value tasks. In practice that usually means fewer manual updates, faster turn-around times and less weekend catch-up – not job cuts.
Which tools do you work with?
Common ones include Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Xero, QuickBooks, Stripe, GoCardless, Monday.com, ServiceM8, Pipedrive, HubSpot, Notion, Airtable, Zapier and Make. For gaps, we may add small custom APIs or scripts so everything fits together cleanly.
What about data privacy and where things are hosted?
We favour UK/EU hosting and reputable providers, keep data flows as simple as possible, and document exactly which services see what. If needed we can work with your own Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace tenant so data stays under your control.
Can we just do a small pilot before committing?
Yes – that’s usually the best path. We’ll pick one workflow or use-case, run a small fixed-scope pilot, and measure the before/after. From there we either expand, adjust or stop, based on real-world results rather than promises.
Ready to take some of the boring work off your team's plate?
Book a £49.50 Cloud & Systems Consultation. We'll map one or two key workflows, highlight realistic automation and AI opportunities, and outline a small first project with clear outcomes.