Professional services
From 12 days to 3: how a professional firm transformed client onboarding
Process Redesign · Guided Automation · Duration: 10 weeks
In summary
The context
Professional services firm
15 people
High frequency of new clients
Process never formalised
The problem
12 days average onboarding
6-8 hours per client across 4 people
3 points of possible data loss
The result
3-day onboarding
Under 2 hours per client
Zero data-collection errors
Context
The context
A professional services firm with 15 employees. High frequency of new clients — onboarding was a critical, recurring activity, yet it had never been formalised.
Each of the 4 professionals involved had their own way of collecting data, communicating with the client, transferring information to colleagues. The process took 12 days on average — but nobody had ever measured exactly how long it required.
Analysis
The problem
The Audit surfaced a simple thing: the process took 12 days not because it really required that time, but because it was fragmented into dozens of micro-activities spread across people, tools and channels.
Email, WhatsApp, phone calls, Excel sheets. Each person had their own version of the forms. Data was entered multiple times into different systems. And at at least 3 points in the process, information could be lost or duplicated without anyone noticing right away.
What the Audit found
No standard flow: each professional followed their own practices
4 different tools used in parallel with no integration
Data entered 2-3 times into different systems
No visibility on the onboarding progress status
Intervention
The intervention
Redesign
weeks 1–6
Mapping of the existing process in its variants. Workshop with the team to define a single standard flow. Elimination of redundancies, definition of a single data-collection point, clear responsibilities for each stage.
Automation
weeks 7–10
Implementation on Power Automate: data collection via a structured form, automatic notifications to the team, synchronisation with the management system. The client receives automatic status updates. The team sees everything in a single dashboard.
Results
The results
12→3
Onboarding days
−75%
Work hours per client
0
Data-collection errors
What concretely changed
3-day onboarding. Under 2 hours of actual work per client. Zero data-collection errors since the new process was introduced.
But the most significant change was another: the team no longer wonders "where are we?" for each new client. The process is visible, traceable, predictable.
And new colleagues learn how it works in an afternoon, instead of having to ask the more experienced ones.
Something I didn't expect
One of the professionals told me, at the end of the project: "I didn't think standardising could free up so much mental energy." Before, he spent part of his day remembering where he'd got to with each client. Now he always knows where to look.
Does your situation remind you of this case?
It doesn't have to be identical. Tell me what your process looks like now and I'll tell you honestly whether I can help.
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