Case Studies
Our Work with Growing Businesses
What the owner was dealing with. What our observations found underneath it. What has been put in place.
Engagements span cash flow recovery, operational control and visibility, workflow redesign and automation, AI and data implementations, and operational support.
If you would like to hear more about the business behind any of these, get in touch.
Fixing order accuracy at a high-volume butchery and deli
Business: Butchery and deli
Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
Size: In excess of 250 WhatsApp orders a day
Primary service: Workflow Redesign and Automation
Secondary service: AI and Data Implementations
Engagement mode: Design and Implement
Status: Planning
A butchery and deli in South Africa handling in excess of 250 WhatsApp orders a day was losing accuracy and owner time to manual order checking. We were asked to find a solution. We diagnosed the issue and designed a three-phase fix, with planning now underway.
What was the problem?
Orders arrive over WhatsApp in each customer's own words, and how a customer describes a product often does not match how it is listed in the order system. Every order is then typed in by hand and checked line by line before it goes to the floor and factory for fulfillment. That checking fell mostly on the owner, from early morning to evening and into weekends, and it was hard to sustain.
What did we find?
Customer wording does not map to the product names in the order system, so matching depends on the one or two people who know both.
Orders are re-typed by hand from WhatsApp to email to the order system, and each re-entry loses detail.
Special instructions, e.g. thickness, vacuum-packing, make-and-freeze, and delivery timing, are what gets dropped, and they matter most for food safety, trust and customer service.
Orders do not state what unit a quantity refers to, so the same number is read one way at entry and another way at fulfilment, and the customer gets the wrong amount.
What did we do?
Mapped the full order flow, from customer message to fulfilment, and named every role and handoff in it.
Diagnosed the operational root causes and set out where accuracy is lost.
Approached the fix as operational process improvement, redesigning how work moves before adding any tools, in three phases: stabilise checking now, remove the language mismatch at the front end, then extend the channel only if it earns its place.
Built working demo screens of the proposed Claude-powered order-checking tool and tested technical feasibility against the live process.
What is in place so far?
The diagnosis and the three-phase plan are agreed with the owner, and the demo screens give the team a concrete view of how checking will work before any build. The first phase is scoped to take the daily checking load off the owner without changing existing systems or roles. Measurable results will follow once it is installed.
This case study is anonymised. If you would like to hear more about the business behind it, get in touch.
Not sure where to start?
Take our free Operational Health Check. It takes five minutes and shows you where to focus first. If you already know what needs fixing, book a call.
Bringing operational control to goods receiving at a meat wholesaler
Business: Wholesale meat merchant
Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
Size: Part of an owner-led group spanning indoor golf, restaurant, coffee shop, deli, 3 butcheries, and wholesale
Primary service: Operational Control and Visibility
Secondary service: Cashflow Recovery
Engagement mode: Review and Assess
Status: Handed Over (Phase 1)
A wholesale meat business in Johannesburg brought us in to tighten operational control over goods receiving. The process is now fully documented, the control gaps identified, and an optimised design is ready to put in place.
What was the problem?
The business was growing, but too much of how it ran lived in a few people's heads. The owner wanted the operation tightened and made to stick, starting at the point where stock comes in the door, because that is where money quietly leaks. Receiving worked, but nobody could say with confidence that every delivery was received, recorded, and paid for correctly.
What did we find?
One person both owned and signed off receiving, so there was no independent check on changes or escalations. Growing key-person dependency.
Short-delivery credit notes and price checks lived on paper and WhatsApp, not in the system of record, so nothing reliably linked what was owed back to what was received.
Nothing recorded what was ordered, and at what agreed price, before a delivery arrived, so the team could only ever check part of the picture.
The same received-against-invoice check was repeated by up to three people, tying up management time while no one clearly owned the control.
What did we do?
Documented and mapped the whole receiving process end to end, exactly as it runs, replacing knowledge held in individuals.
Ran a structured operational review across process, workflow, systems, finance, and control, and pinned down the root causes above.
Designed the improved version with a single clear owner, a separate senior sponsor, defined measures, and a handoff that no longer stalls on one person.
What is in place so far?
The leadership team now has one shared, documented view of how receiving runs and where the control gaps sit, plus an optimised design ready to walk through and implement. This is the first process in a phased plan to bring the same operational control and performance visibility across the wider operation.
This case study is anonymised. If you would like to hear more about the business behind it, get in touch.
Not sure where to start?
Take our free Operational Health Check. It takes five minutes and shows you where to focus first. If you already know what needs fixing, book a call.