Cut the manual steps out of the processes that run your business
Business process automation takes a workflow that runs on re-typing, email forwarding, and waiting on the one person who knows, and rebuilds it so the routine steps execute themselves. It removes the tax on every order, invoice, or work request: hours of manual handling, days lost between handoffs, and the errors that creep in each time data is keyed twice.
Willowark starts by mapping the process as it actually runs — not the version in the SOP binder. Deterministic steps get plain, testable code. Steps that need judgment, like classifying a request or extracting fields from a messy attachment, get an AI model with confidence scoring. People stay at the genuine decision points, and everything else moves on its own.
AI & Intelligent AutomationHow the work gets done
The same way every time: scope, build, hand over.
The build is mostly integration engineering. We connect systems through their APIs where they exist, use webhooks and polling where they don't, and treat screen automation as a last resort. Work flows through queues so a crashed step retries instead of silently dropping an order, operations are idempotent, and anything the automation cannot handle lands in an exception queue with context.
In production you get a dashboard showing what ran, what is waiting, and what needs a human. The number we track is straight-through rate: the share of items completing with no manual touch. That rate typically keeps climbing after launch as we work down the exception categories one by one.
Mapping is done by watching the process run, not by interviewing about it. We sit with the people who handle orders or invoices, capture each step and the system it touches, and note where the workarounds live: the spreadsheet on someone's desktop, the email rule that forwards to the right person, the check that only happens when a particular employee is in. The output is a map with counts and timings attached, which tells us which steps are worth automating first. We then pick a first slice with a clear boundary and enough volume to matter, and leave the rare branches for later rounds.
The trade-off we weigh is coverage against complexity. Automating every branch of a process makes the code brittle and the exceptions hard to reason about; automating the common path and routing the rest to people usually delivers most of the value with a fraction of the maintenance. What goes wrong after launch is rarely the automation itself. It is a vendor changing a field name, a new product line that fits no existing rule, or a person bypassing the queue. We design against that with monitoring on every integration, exception categories reviewed on a schedule, and a handover where your team owns the code, the dashboard, and the runbook.
Scope it in writing
What we agree before work starts
- Process map documenting current-state steps, systems, and failure points
- Automation services connecting your systems through APIs, webhooks, and queues
Build with checkpoints
Working results, not slide decks
- Exception workflow that routes edge cases to people with full context
- Operations dashboard showing throughput, queue depth, and straight-through rate
Hand over something you own
Documentation, source, and training
- Documentation and training so your team can run and extend the automation
- Integration test suite with recorded payloads from each connected system, run before every change
Sound familiar?
Where business process automation earns its keep.
A dispatcher re-typing work orders into three systems every morning
An AP clerk matching invoices to purchase orders by hand and chasing approvals over email
An order desk copying ecommerce orders into the ERP one at a time
A quality team compiling the same weekly report from four spreadsheets
Ask about Business Process Automation
Describe the problem. Get a straight answer.
One line is enough. An engineer replies within a business day.
Related work
AI operating software for training operations
Components:
- Schedulers (training ops): The people running the training operation.
- Operating software (AI assistance): The operating software, with AI assistance built in.
- Cloud services (distributed): Distributed cloud services behind the application.
- Training game (learning): The training game the software connects to.
Connections:
- Schedulers to Operating software
- Operating software to Cloud services
- Operating software to Training game
A global automotive manufacturer's training operation · Automotive
AI operating software for training operations
AI operating software for the manufacturer's training schedulers — removing manual scheduling labor and logistics tracking, saving hundreds of hours per year — plus a training video game built to help trainers perform better. Used across the manufacturer's training organization.
Read the case study →Common questions
Asked before every business process automation project.
Will the automation break when one of our vendors changes their software?
Integrations are built against versioned APIs where possible, and every connection is monitored, so a change shows up as an alert rather than a silent failure. When a vendor does break something, work backs up safely in a queue instead of disappearing, and the fix is usually isolated to one adapter.
What happens to the cases the automation can't handle?
They go to an exception queue with everything the automation knew attached — the document, the extracted fields, and the reason it stopped — so a person resolves the case in minutes instead of starting cold. Recurring exception patterns become candidates for the next round of automation.
Do we have to replace our existing software to automate?
No. Most of our automation work sits between the systems you already own — ERP, CRM, email, ecommerce — and moves data across them. Replacing software is a separate decision, and automation often postpones it by making the current stack workable.
How do you decide which process to automate first?
By volume, pain, and boundary. We look for a process that runs often enough for the savings to add up, hurts enough that people will help us get it right, and has clear inputs and outputs so the automation has a defined edge. A process that meets all three and touches systems with usable APIs is usually the right first project; the harder ones come after the team has seen one work.
How is this different from tools like Zapier or Power Automate?
Those tools are a good fit for simple, low-volume connections, and we use them when they are. They get expensive and fragile when a workflow needs branching logic, retries, idempotent writes, or an exception queue that a team actually works from. Our automation is plain code with tests and monitoring, which costs more to build and usually less to keep running once the process has any real complexity.
Where this sits
Business Process Automation, inside a ai & intelligent automation system.
The lit component is the part of the system this service delivers; the rest is what it has to work with.
Hover or focus a component to see what it is and what it talks to. Arrow keys move between them.
Inbound documents and messages are ingested, an agent reasons with company knowledge and acts through the systems of record, and a person reviews the cases that need judgment.
Components:
- Inbound (email, PDFs, forms): The unstructured work arriving every day.
- Ingestion (extract, classify): Turns documents into structured fields with confidence scores.
- Agent (reasons, uses tools): A model with tools: it looks things up, decides, and acts — within limits you set.
- Knowledge (your docs): Company procedures and history, retrieved on demand.
- Systems of record (ERP, CRM): Where the work actually lands.
- Reviewer (exceptions): The person who sees what the agent was unsure about.
Connections:
- Inbound to Ingestion over email
- Ingestion to Agent over events
- Agent to Knowledge over REST, both directions
- Agent to Systems of record over REST
- Agent to Reviewer over handoff
Strategy. Software. Systems.
Have a system that should exist?
Tell us what your operation is doing manually, what isn't connected, or what you're trying to build. We'll tell you plainly whether and how we can help.