Moving & storage · Hong Kong
A full operations system for a Hong Kong moving and storage company
Five workflows. One record. One login.
Their online quotation form already worked. Everything after the customer pressed Submit was paper. We started at Submit — and over the engagement built five workflows onto one record, with the client working inside their own logged-in system.
What we deliberately did not touch
We never went near their quotation calculator. It works, it took them years to get right, and replacing something that already works is how automation projects lose people’s trust. We start at the moment the customer hits Submit — which is exactly where their paperwork started.
The challenge
Enquiries arrived on WhatsApp and by email and nothing joined them up, so the same customer could ask three times and be treated as three strangers. Job documents were typed out per move. Storage rent was chased separately from the moves that generated it. The month’s trading existed only inside one enormous spreadsheet, so nobody could say which service line was actually collecting — and there was no way to record that a customer had paid.
The solution
Five workflows on one record, delivered one at a time, each in production before the next was started. The client signs in to their own system on a database belonging to them alone — no spreadsheet passed around, no shared login, no export to keep in step.
Screen one — the enquiry inbox
What you see: every channel in one inbox with the reply already drafted — and the message that must never be answered automatically, flagged red. A person always taps send.
The five workflows we built
① The enquiry inbox
WhatsApp and email land in one place, matched against their own knowledge base and drafted in their own voice. Confident replies are marked ready, low-confidence ones are held for review, and a complaint is flagged so it can never send automatically.
② Job paperwork
The documents that used to be typed out per move, generated from the job that was already submitted, on their own letterhead.
③ The client portal
A logged-in system on a database belonging to this client alone. Sign-in is a one-time PIN, so there is no password to lose or to share around the office.
④ The money
Invoices, recorded payments, and paid-or-unpaid derived from the ledger rather than ticked by hand. Storage rent bills onto the same invoice as the move it came from.
⑤ Calendar and month
What is booked, what clashes, and what the month actually did by service line — read straight off the records the other four workflows already write.
Screen two — the month, by service line
What you see: where the month’s money actually is. Moves collect 85% of what they bill; storage collects 4.4% — a problem no single revenue figure would ever show you.
How it was delivered
- Week one: the first workflow live. Not a prototype in a demo account — in production, doing real work, while the rest was still being built.
- Then one at a time. Each workflow was in production before the next was started, so there was never a big-bang cutover to survive.
- Their history came with them. Twenty months of their existing book and 1,540 past jobs were migrated in, so the system opened with their real past in it rather than an empty database.
- It is still running. Monitored and maintained after go-live — the part that decides whether an automation is still working a year later.
The results
- Enquiries from two channels arrive in one place with the reply already drafted — and a person still decides whether it goes.
- Job paperwork stopped being typed.
- Storage rent bills alongside the move that generated it, instead of being chased separately.
- Paid and unpaid are derived from the ledger, so the answer cannot drift away from the money.
- The month’s trading is a screen — and it shows which service line bills well and collects badly, which a single revenue total never could.
Client anonymised. Screens show sample data, not client records. Figures describe the system we built.