Tech and automation

One of the two developed fundamentals delivered under the Resources pillar in BRD-Strategy.

What it is

A read of the tools and workflows the team uses to operate the digital presence, and the automation opportunities that would reduce manual work. The output is a leaner stack that does what the team needs, with the right things automated and the wrong things removed. Tech that creates more problems than it solves is a recurring failure mode in small businesses, and the audit names where that's happening before you commit to any new tool.

What's included

• Stack inventory. Every tool in active use across the digital presence: CMS, email, analytics, automation platforms, scheduling, CRM, payments, social schedulers, file storage. Per tool: what it does, what it costs, who uses it, and whether the team can actually run it without external help.
• Overlap audit. Where two or more tools do the same job and the team picks between them by accident. The decision: keep one, retire the others.
• Workflow map. The recurring tasks in the team's week (publishing, billing, onboarding, reporting, content production), drawn end-to-end with handoffs and waiting periods named.
• Automation candidates. The tasks where automation would actually pay off, ordered by hours saved versus implementation cost. Includes both no-code automations (Zapier, n8n, native integrations) and platform-side automations (CMS scheduled posts, email autoresponders, etc).
• Risk and lock-in review. Which tools concentrate risk if they're discontinued, breached, or repriced. Where the data is stored and whether you can extract it. Vendor lock-in flagged.
• Recommendation. The leaner stack the team should run, with the migration path from the current stack to the proposed one.

When you'd want this

• The team uses too many tools and nobody is sure which ones are still being paid for.
• A specific workflow eats hours every week and you suspect automation would free that time.
• A tool you depend on has been priced up, sold, or sunsetted, and you need to plan the move.
• You're hiring or onboarding and you want the stack documented properly before someone has to learn it on the job.