NorthCoast Veterinary Group

The challenge

Before

NorthCoast Veterinary Group was running six clinics, each with its own version of patient intake, scheduling, and lab-result handling. There was no shared definition of "the workflow" — and no honest way to evaluate where AI would actually pay back. The founder was getting pitched a new chatbot or "AI receptionist" almost every week and had no framework to compare them. Leadership wanted a vendor-neutral read on where to invest first, where to leave things alone, and which pitches to stop taking meetings about.

• Six clinics each running their own intake, scheduling, and lab-result process
• No baseline measure of hours lost to repetitive admin per clinic
• Founder being pitched 6+ different chatbot vendors with no way to evaluate them
• Lab results manually triaged by vet techs across all locations
• No shared SOPs — every clinic lead had their own workarounds
• Multiple half-started SaaS trials abandoned because nobody scoped the workflow first
• No prioritisation framework for AI spend — pure gut feel
• No internal capacity to write a real implementation brief

The solution

What we built

We ran our 1-week paid AI Operations Audit. Over five days we interviewed three clinic leads and two frontline vet techs, sat through real intake calls, and shadowed a lab-result triage cycle. We mapped 22 recurring workflows across the group and scored each on three axes — hours saved per year, automation complexity, and risk if the agent gets it wrong. The deliverable was a written report (PDF + Notion) with four prioritised recommendations: an intake triage agent ranked #1, lab-result classification ranked #2, plus two smaller wins for reminders and pre-visit forms. We also included an honest no-go list — three workflows we explicitly recommended against automating. Ninety days later they came back and we built recommendation #1 together. The audit fee was credited toward the build.

How the system flows

1. Discovery interviews→3 clinic leads + 2 vet techs across all locations
2. Workflow mapping→22 recurring manual processes documented end-to-end
3. Leverage scoring→hours/year saved × automation complexity × risk-if-wrong
4. Vendor pitch triage→evaluated 6 active chatbot pitches against real workflow data
5. Priority shortlist→top 4 automations scoped with fixed-budget envelopes
6. No-go list→3 workflows explicitly flagged as wrong fit for AI
7. Written report→PDF + Notion deliverable, owned by the client
8. Implementation handover→audit fee credited when Phase 1 build kicked off 90 days later