Common Questions.

We’re your ongoing partner on all things AI and process automation. AI is new and it changes every few weeks, so it’s hard to keep up. We train your team and help you work out where it fits and what’s safe. Then we build it for you and look after it, so you get the most out of it without having to become an expert yourself.

That can be one piece of work, such as invoices pulled from your inbox and loaded into Xero as drafts, or a monthly package where we work down a roadmap together. Everything runs in your own accounts, so you own what we build.

Owner-led businesses that know their team loses too much time to manual admin but are not sure where automation should start.

Perkins SmartOps was founded in January 2026 by an auditor with over a decade of process work, and we are deliberately taking on our first clients now. The system we run our own business on is on show, so you can judge the approach before committing to anything.

Most automation companies build the robot in their house. We build it in yours. Three things set us apart:

Everything runs in your accounts. Every automation we build lives in your own accounts, on your own infrastructure, and it is yours to keep, run and change for good. Your data and your tools stay yours. If we ever parted ways, you keep the keys to the engine. No vendor lock-in.

We target a 26-week payback. If we cannot demonstrate that kind of return during the audit, we will tell you before we start building. Every project is tied to measurable savings, not vague promises.

We build with AI where it makes sense. Not every problem needs artificial intelligence. We match the right tool to the right task, from simple workflow automation to specialist AI agents tailored to your business.

Most clients work with us on one of three monthly partnership packages: Foundations at £995, Momentum at £1,995 and Embedded at £2,995 a month. Each one covers mapping your processes, a roadmap, automations built and handed over, your server looked after and AI training. The difference is how much we work on at once.

If you would rather start with an independent look at the whole business, Audit and Assurance is £1,995 for two days on site and a report by the Friday, or £2,995 where a third day is needed. Single builds are quoted against the value they return. No VAT to add.

Book the free strategy session, or see the three packages.

No fixed term. The packages and the managed service run month to month, paid in advance, and you stop with one month's notice, so the least anyone pays on a package is two months. No exit fees.

Because everything is built in your own accounts, your automations keep running even after you leave. You are never locked in.

If something breaks after you have left the managed service, we are still here. We will assess the issue and provide a transparent quote to fix it. No obligation, no pressure to re-subscribe.

Four steps:

Audit. We map your current workflows and identify the highest-value automation opportunities.

Build. We provide transparent proposals tied to measurable savings, prototype fast, then deliver production-grade systems. Every build goes through extensive testing by us and by you before anything goes live.

Monitor. Active monitoring, error handling, and performance checks, designed to catch issues before they reach you.

Optimise. Quarterly reviews to refine, expand, and ensure your automations keep delivering ROI.

Most automation builds are completed within 14 days, depending on complexity. Simple workflows can be live within days. We will give you a realistic timeline during the audit phase.

No. You need to understand your own business processes. Where time is being wasted, what causes errors, what slows your team down. We handle all the technical work.

We design every system with a human-in-the-loop approach, meaning high-stakes decisions always get a human thumbs-up. The technology serves you, not the other way around.

When it adds value, yes. Not every automation needs AI, and we will never bolt it on just because it sounds impressive. A simple workflow that moves data between two systems does not need artificial intelligence. It needs reliable plumbing.

Where AI does come in is for tasks that require judgement, language, or pattern recognition. That can range from a single AI step that drafts a report or categorises incoming enquiries, all the way through to a highly complex AI agent that manages an entire process end-to-end, making decisions, taking actions, and learning from outcomes.

We will always recommend the simplest solution that solves the problem. If that means no AI, we will say so.

Checks that sit between an AI step and the action it would take. Tone, factual accuracy, business rules, cost limits. The AI does not act unless the Judges pass. The judging can be code (deterministic rules) or another AI (semantic checks). Both count.

Most of the AI failures you have read about would not have happened with Judges in place.

Depends on what you choose. We default to providers with no-training, no-retention contracts (Anthropic, Azure OpenAI, OpenRouter routed appropriately). If your data is sensitive enough that even routing matters, self-hosted models are an option. We will tell you the trade-offs honestly.

We design every workflow assuming AI will sometimes get it wrong. That is what Judges are for. For high-stakes actions, the AI drafts and a human reviews before send. For low-stakes actions, Judges catch the obvious failures and a human reviews exceptions. The acceptable error rate is your call, not ours.

An independent check on the AI and automated workflows your business has already deployed. It does not ask where you could use them. It asks whether what you are already running does what it should, whether it is safe and compliant, and whether someone is accountable when a routine or a model gets it wrong.

This is an independent advisory review using internal-audit discipline, not a formal assurance opinion under ISAE 3000. You get a report you can act on, hand over, or take to your board.

More detail on the Audit and Assurance page.

You do. Everything we build lives in your own accounts. You retain 100% ownership of your data and intellectual property. No black boxes, no vendor lock-in.

You keep everything. Because all automations are built in your own accounts, they continue to run even if our engagement ends. We provide full handover documentation so your team, or another provider, can maintain and extend the systems.

We operate under UK GDPR and use data minimisation principles. AI only sees what it needs to perform a specific task. We use a direct, secure connection which, by default, excludes your data from being used for model training.

Because everything runs in your own accounts, your sensitive business data never sits on our servers.

Email [email protected] and tell us about the problem you are trying to solve or the outcome you want. We will suggest a pragmatic starting point.

No sales pitch, no obligation. Just questions and options.

That is exactly what the audit is for. We start by understanding how your business operates day-to-day, then identify where the biggest time savings and error reductions are hiding. You do not need to come with a technical brief. Just tell us what frustrates your team, and we will find the opportunities.