How to judge an automation supplier
Every firm in this market shows you case studies. Almost none of them can be checked. Here is what to look at instead, all of it verifiable without asking anyone's permission.
Umer Ejaz Chaudhry, Cadral AI ·
We read ten UK and international automation firms’ websites in full before building this one. Two of them publish case studies with real-looking numbers and the word “illustrative” somewhere nearby.
Four run a wall of client logos. Almost all of them use a testimonial with a first name and an initial.
None of that is checkable by you, which makes it a poor basis for a decision even when it is entirely true. So here is what is checkable.
Open something they built
Not a screenshot of it, not a slide about it. Something you can put your own numbers into and watch behave. A supplier who builds working software has something you can open in a browser; one who does not will offer a demo call.
It is the single most informative thing you can do, and it takes about four minutes. Run their own tools against your real situation and see whether the output is specific enough to be useful or generic enough to be a lead form.
Ask how they calculated something
Any supplier who quotes you a saving has done arithmetic. Ask to see it.
What hourly cost did they use, was it loaded with employer’s National Insurance and overhead or just salary, how did they estimate the time the task takes now, and what did they assume about the proportion that still needs a person afterwards?
A good answer is immediate and slightly boring. A bad one gets vague at exactly the point where the number came from, and you will notice.
Check what you can measure yourself
Run Lighthouse on their own website. It takes thirty seconds in Chrome and tells you whether the firm that will build your systems applies its own standards to its own work. Not a complete picture, but real evidence rather than a claim.
Look at whether their site works with JavaScript disabled, whether it is usable on a phone, and whether it loads quickly on a poor connection. A firm selling you engineering discipline is demonstrating theirs on every page you are reading.
Find out who is actually doing the work
Ask who will build it, and whether the people in the meeting are the people doing the work. The gap between who sells and who delivers is the most common source of disappointment in this market, and it has a short, checkable answer.
Then ask what happens to the work if you stop working together. Who holds the repository, whose name is on the hosting account, whose accounts hold the integrations. Suppliers who have thought about this answer instantly.
Ask what they would not build
Not as a trick. A supplier who has been doing this for a while has a real answer: a process whose rules are still changing every month, a workflow where the payback is not there, something a subscription you already pay for would do.
A supplier who says yes to everything either has not worked out the boundaries yet or is not going to tell you where they are.
Read something here you want running in your business? Send us the brief and we will come back with a fixed price, or book twenty minutes and talk it through.
Tell us the job. We will tell you the price.
Twenty minutes and a fixed quote in writing. You bring the brief and the brand. Everything after that is us.
Not ready to talk? Run your own numbers on fifteen free tools, no email asked.
