Questions to ask before hiring an automation consultant

Questions about understanding your business

1. What do you need to see before quoting? A good answer involves your current steps, tools, volumes and exceptions — not just a list of apps.
2. Who on our side needs to be involved, and for how long? Automations built without the people who do the work usually miss exceptions.
3. Will you tell us if something isn't worth automating? You want someone willing to say no.

Questions about scope

1. What exactly is included? Ask for named workflows, triggers, actions and the systems involved, in writing.
2. What's excluded? Exclusions prevent most disputes.
3. Which third-party costs will we pay? Connector subscriptions, extra seats, messaging or usage fees — and who's account they'll be on.
4. What do you need from us, and by when? Access, decisions and sample data are common bottlenecks.

Questions about quality

1. How will you test it? Look for test data, edge cases and failure paths, not just "we'll try it". See how to test an automation.
2. What happens when it fails? Who gets alerted, how do we pause it, how are missed items recovered? See silent failures.
3. How do you handle duplicates and retries?
4. Which steps will need our approval before acting? Money, commitments and customer messages are the usual ones.

Questions about ownership and access

1. Whose accounts will the workflows live in? They should be yours. See safe vendor access.
2. How will you access our systems? Named user invitations, not shared passwords.
3. What documentation will we receive? At minimum, a runbook per workflow.
4. If there's custom code, where will it live and who owns it?

Questions about after launch

1. What support is included after go-live, and for how long?
2. What does ongoing maintenance cost, and what does it cover?
3. How are changes requested and priced?

Promises to be wary of

• Guaranteed revenue, leads or a fixed number of hours saved.
• "Fully automated" processes involving money, commitments or sensitive data with no approval steps.
• A fixed price before they've seen your workflow.
• Workflows built in their accounts "for convenience".
• No mention of testing, monitoring or documentation.

How MendRev answers these

MendRev's Business Automations start with a workflow review and a custom written scope; tools, permissions, integration availability and third-party costs are reviewed before you approve the work. Testing uses sample data and internal recipients, and customer-facing or payment-related actions go live only after your review. We don't guarantee sales or business outcomes. You can also use the Business Auditor to prepare an editable scope brief before talking to anyone — us or another provider.

Questions