How we work
A consulting method, applied by the people who build the solution
Syntrava operates as a consulting firm, not a freelancer selling one-off automations. The engagement is structured, the diagnosis comes before the proposal, and success is measured against something agreed in advance.
Where every engagement starts
A two to four week assessment of how your business actually runs
Before anyone talks about software, we spend two to four weeks understanding your operation properly. We come to you, we sit with the people doing the work, and we follow real jobs from the moment they arrive to the moment they are finished.
You finish with a documented picture of where time and money are going, and a prioritized plan for fixing it. It is yours to keep whether you implement it with us, in-house, or not at all.
- 1Week 1
We come to you
Our team spends time on site, in person, watching how the business really operates.
- 2Week 1 to 2
We follow the work end to end
One job, one order, one client. Traced from arrival to completion, then repeated with an awkward one.
- 3Week 2 to 3
We review the systems already in place
Remotely and with your team, we map what you own, what it does, and where the gaps are being filled by hand.
- 4Week 3 to 4
Findings and a prioritized roadmap
We present what we found with the evidence behind it, then a plan ranked by value, effort and risk.
This is paid work, not a free audit
A free audit is a sales exercise, and it can only ever conclude that you need whatever the firm happens to sell. The assessment is a fixed fee, agreed in full before anything starts, and the roadmap is yours to keep whether or not you implement it with us.
Discovery call
No cost
A 30 to 45 minute conversation about how your business runs. No obligation either way.
The assessment
Fixed fee
Quoted in full before it begins, so there is no open-ended meter running.
Anything we build
Priced per project
You choose what to implement. Each project is scoped and priced on its own.
Ongoing support
Optional monthly
Only if you want it, and you can stop whenever it stops being worth it.
What you walk away with
- Documented workflow maps of your core processes
- A written findings report with the evidence behind each conclusion
- An inventory of systems, data and the manual work between them
- A prioritized transformation roadmap you own outright
- A presentation and working session with your leadership team
What it asks of your team
- A few hours, not a few weeks
- Most people we interview give us 45 minutes once. We work around your operating hours rather than interrupting them.
- On site and remote
- The parts that need to happen in the room happen in the room. Everything else runs remotely so we are not underfoot.
- No preparation required
- You do not need to tidy anything up first. Seeing the process as it actually runs is the entire point.
The method
Understand → Map → Prioritize → Design → Build → Measure → Improve
The same sequence runs on every engagement. It is deliberately slow at the start, because the cost of designing the wrong solution is far higher than the cost of a few extra days spent understanding the problem.
Understand
Learn how the business runs today, from the people who run it.
Map
Document the real workflow, systems, handoffs and decision points.
Prioritize
Rank opportunities by value, effort and operational risk.
Design
Define the target-state process and the system that supports it.
Build
Configure, integrate or build it, then test it against real work.
Measure
Compare results to the baseline agreed before we started.
Improve
Refine what is live and move to the next roadmap priority.
Understand
Learn how the business runs today, from the people who run it.
Map
Document the real workflow, systems, handoffs and decision points.
Prioritize
Rank opportunities by value, effort and operational risk.
Design
Define the target-state process and the system that supports it.
Build
Configure, integrate or build it, then test it against real work.
Measure
Compare results to the baseline agreed before we started.
Improve
Refine what is live and move to the next roadmap priority.
Understand
We talk to leadership and to the people doing the work, follow real jobs through the business, and learn how information, decisions and approvals genuinely move, not how the org chart says they do.
Identify
We locate where time is lost, where work waits, where information is re-entered, and where the operation depends too heavily on one person, then size each opportunity so you can decide what is worth fixing first.
Transform
We design the better version of the process, then implement it through redesign, custom tools, automation, AI, integration, CRM improvement or documentation, whichever the problem actually calls for.
Optimize
We baseline before, measure after, and keep refining. Real usage always exposes edge cases the design did not anticipate, and the business keeps changing around the system.
The client journey
From the first conversation to ongoing support
Eight stages. You can stop after any of them, and the work completed to that point still belongs to you.
- 130–45 minutes · no cost
Discovery Call
A direct conversation about how your business runs, where it hurts, and whether there is a genuine fit.
What Syntrava does
- Understand the shape of the business and how work moves through it
- Ask about the processes that consume the most time or cause the most friction
- Give an honest view of whether this is a problem worth engaging on
What you get
A clear sense of how we would approach your operation, and a straight answer if we are not the right fit.
- 22–4 weeks · paid engagement
Business Transformation Assessment
A structured diagnosis of how your business operates today. This is paid work, not a free audit dressed up as a sales process.
What Syntrava does
- Interview leadership and the staff who perform the work
- Observe real processes end to end rather than relying on descriptions
- Review the systems, data and handoffs already in place
- Quantify where time, rework and delay are concentrated
What you get
A documented, evidence-based picture of your operation, including the problems you already suspected and the ones you did not.
- 3Presented and discussed
Operational Findings
We present what we found: the bottlenecks, dependencies, gaps and duplicated effort, with the reasoning behind each conclusion.
What Syntrava does
- Present workflow maps of the current state
- Set out each finding with the evidence supporting it
- Separate the structural problems from the symptoms
What you get
A clear, honest account of how the operation performs today, useful on its own regardless of what happens next.
- 4Prioritized and sequenced
Transformation Roadmap
A prioritized plan: what to change, in what order, what each change is worth, and how it could be implemented.
What Syntrava does
- Rank opportunities by business value, effort and risk
- Recommend an implementation approach for each
- Sequence the work so early wins fund and de-risk later ones
- Identify what you can reasonably do in-house
What you get
A roadmap you own outright. If you take it and implement it yourself, the assessment has still done its job.
- 5Scoped per project
Implementation Proposal
You choose what to implement. We scope and price each project individually based on complexity, integration effort and expected value.
What Syntrava does
- Scope each selected project with defined deliverables
- Set out timelines, dependencies and what we need from your team
- Agree the measures that will define success before work begins
What you get
A defined scope, timeline and price per project, with no obligation to take all of them, or any of them.
- 6Configured, integrated or built
Build & Deployment
We implement the solution, test it against real work, document it, train the people who will use it, and establish the baseline.
What Syntrava does
- Configure, integrate or build the system
- Test against real cases, including the awkward ones
- Document how it works and how to maintain it
- Train the team and support the transition to live use
What you get
A working system in production, documentation your team can rely on, and staff who know how to use it.
- 7Against the agreed baseline
Measurement
We compare the result to the measures agreed before the project started: time, cycle time, response, errors, capacity or visibility.
What Syntrava does
- Track the measures defined at the outset
- Report the result plainly, including where it fell short
- Identify what the implementation exposed that we did not anticipate
What you get
An honest account of what changed, in the terms agreed up front rather than terms chosen afterwards to look good.
- 8Optional · recurring
Ongoing Optimization
An optional continuing relationship: monitoring, refinement, system administration and the next wave of roadmap work.
What Syntrava does
- Monitor and maintain what is live
- Refine as real usage exposes new edge cases
- Administer CRM and operational systems where that helps
- Deliver the next priorities from the roadmap
What you get
Improvements that compound, and a partner who already understands how the business works.
We do not ask which automation you want. We ask how the process works today, where it breaks down, and what a better version would look like.
Working together
How engagements are structured
Four stages, each with a defined end. You can stop after any of them, and nothing is open-ended.
- Stage 1No cost
Discovery call
A 30–45 minute conversation about how your business runs and what is causing friction. We give you an honest view of whether there is a problem worth engaging on.
- A straight opinion on whether this is worth pursuing
- A sense of how we would approach your operation
What you are not committing to: Nothing. If we are not the right fit, we will say so on the call.
- Stage 2Fixed fee · 2–4 weeks
Business Transformation Assessment
A paid, scoped diagnosis with a defined start and end. You know the cost and the deliverable before it begins. This is the only engagement most clients commit to at first.
- Interviews with leadership and the people doing the work
- Observation of real processes, not descriptions of them
- Workflow maps of the current state, documented
- Bottlenecks and dependencies quantified in time
- A prioritized roadmap sequenced by value, effort and risk
What you are not committing to: Any implementation. The roadmap is yours outright: take it in-house, take it elsewhere, or do nothing with it.
- Stage 3Priced per project · scoped individually
Implementation projects
You choose which roadmap items to act on. Each one is scoped, priced and delivered as a separate project with its own deliverables, timeline and success measure.
- A defined scope and fixed price before work starts
- Solution design, build, testing and documentation
- Training and support through the transition to live use
- Accountability for the outcome, not just the deliverable
What you are not committing to: All of them, or any of them. Projects run one at a time unless you want otherwise.
- Stage 4Optional monthly · cancellable
Ongoing optimization
A continuing relationship for monitoring, refinement, system administration and the next roadmap priorities. Entirely optional, and plenty of clients will not need it.
- Monitoring and maintenance of what we implemented
- Iterative improvement as real usage exposes edge cases
- Delivery of the next priorities from the roadmap
What you are not committing to: A long-term contract. If it stops being worth it, you stop.
What the fee is actually for
Pricing is not based on what the software costs. Most of the tools involved are inexpensive or already sitting in your business unused. What you are paying for is the diagnosis, the solution design, the implementation, the integration work, the change management, and someone being accountable for whether it actually worked.
Diagnosis before prescription
The expensive mistake is not the software licence. It is spending six months building the wrong thing because nobody mapped the process first.
Scope defined before you commit
Every stage has a defined deliverable and a price agreed in advance. There is no open-ended meter running.
You can stop at any stage
The assessment is deliberately self-contained. If you take the roadmap and implement it yourself, it has still done its job.
Measured against a baseline
We record where things stand before we change anything, and report against it afterwards, including where a project fell short.
What we don’t do
Being straight about the edges of what we do is more useful to you than a capability list that covers everything.
Enterprise platform implementations
Multi-year ERP rollouts and large-scale platform migrations need a bench we do not have. If that is genuinely what you need, we will say so.
Staff augmentation
We are not a body shop. We take on scoped projects with defined outcomes, not open-ended placements.
Marketing, ads and creative
We work on how the business operates. Improving your lead process is in scope; generating the leads is not.
Systems with no way in
Some older or proprietary software has no API and no export worth using. We will tell you that before you spend anything, not after.
Guaranteed numbers before we have looked
We will not promise a percentage saving on a discovery call. We do not know your business yet, and anyone who does promise it does not either.
Work we would be learning on your budget
Where a project needs deeper specialist capability we bring in a contractor and stay accountable, or we tell you it is not a fit.
So what does it actually cost?
The assessment is a fixed fee, quoted before it starts. Implementation projects vary far too much to publish a meaningful range. A workflow redesign and a custom internal system are different orders of magnitude, and a number without a scope attached would only mislead you. We will give you a real figure on the discovery call once we understand what you are dealing with, and we would rather tell you it is not worth doing than sell you something that is not.
From a process held together by one person to a system anyone can run
Almost every business has at least one process like this. A request comes in. Someone experienced works out the answer by referring to a spreadsheet, a few files and a good deal of knowledge they carry in their head. It gets approved informally, a document is assembled by hand, and whether anything happens next depends on somebody remembering. It works, but it is slow, hard to delegate, and easy to get wrong under pressure.
This is an illustrative example used to explain how we approach a problem of this kind. It is not a client case study and does not describe completed client work or results.
The same shape shows up as
- Quoting and estimating
- Job and service scheduling
- Client or customer onboarding
- Order and work-order intake
- Claims and application handling
- Purchasing and approvals
- Dispatch and job assignment
- Recurring reporting
One person, one spreadsheet, one bottleneck.
- Requests arrive by phone, email and form, then get re-typed into a system
- The answer depends on one experienced person and what they remember
- Rates, rules and reference data live across several files of varying vintage
- Approval happens over email and message, with no consistent record
- The final document is rebuilt by hand every time
- Follow-up happens if somebody remembers, and quietly does not if they do not
A repeatable system other staff can run with confidence.
- Structured intake captures complete information the first time
- One approved source supplies current rules and reference data
- The logic runs the same way every time, whoever is doing the work
- Anything unusual routes to a named approver, with a record of the decision
- Documents generate from approved inputs instead of being reassembled
- Follow-up becomes a tracked state rather than something to remember
How the system works, stage by stage
- 01
Capture the request properly
Whatever the request is, whether a quote, a booking, an order or an application, it arrives through structured intake that asks for what the process actually needs, rather than as free text someone has to interpret.
- 02
Draw on approved reference data
Rates, rules, availability, pricing, eligibility criteria: one authorised source, current and maintained, rather than several spreadsheets of uncertain vintage.
- 03
Prompt for what is missing
Rather than producing an answer from incomplete inputs, the system asks for any required information that has not been supplied, before work continues.
- 04
Apply the rules consistently
The logic is defined once and applied identically every time. Anything financial or consequential runs on formulas and approved data. AI is not left to invent numbers or perform uncontrolled decision logic.
- 05
Show the result and the assumptions
The output and the reasoning behind it are presented clearly, so the person responsible can sanity-check it before it goes anywhere.
- 06
Route exceptions for approval
High-value or unusual cases require sign-off from a named person, with a record of who approved what and on what basis.
- 07
Generate the output
Approved inputs populate the proposal, confirmation, schedule or work order, consistent every time and not rebuilt by hand.
- 08
Hand off and track follow-up
The relevant system is updated and the next step is owned by the process. Something waiting on a response becomes a tracked state rather than a forgotten one.
Why this example matters
The value here is not the technology. It is turning a process that depends on one experienced person and a complicated spreadsheet into a controlled, repeatable system that other staff can use. The specifics change from business to business; the shape almost never does, which is why the same approach applies whatever industry you are in.
Illustrative example · not a client case study
Common questions
What owners usually ask first
Why is the assessment paid rather than free?
A free audit is a sales exercise, and it can only conclude that you need what the firm sells. A paid assessment is real work: interviews, observation, process mapping and analysis over two to four weeks. It produces a roadmap you own outright, whether or not you implement it with us.
Do we have to implement everything on the roadmap?
No. The roadmap is prioritized and sequenced so you can take it in stages, implement parts of it in-house, or not proceed at all. Each implementation project is scoped and priced separately, and you choose which ones go ahead.
How long does an engagement take?
The assessment typically runs two to four weeks. Implementation timelines depend entirely on what the assessment finds. A workflow redesign and a custom internal system are very different pieces of work, and we scope each one individually rather than pricing a standard package.
What if the answer is that we do not need new software?
Then that is what we will tell you. Some of the highest-return changes are process changes, delegated decision rights or removed steps that cost nothing to implement. We would rather give you that answer than sell you a build you did not need.
Will we work with the people who did the assessment?
Yes. That is deliberate. The person who runs your discovery and assessment stays involved through the design and the build, so nothing is handed down to a delivery team you have never met.
Do you work outside the Greater Toronto Area?
We are based in the GTA and much of our early work is local, which makes in-person discovery straightforward. We work with clients elsewhere in Canada where the engagement suits a mix of remote and on-site work.
Start here
Start with a conversation
Tell us how a process works in your business today. That conversation is usually enough for both of us to know whether an assessment is worth doing.
A 30–45 minute conversation. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you.
Prefer to reach us directly? hello@syntrava.ca or +1 (866) 697-1647 (toll free). Based in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, working with clients across Canada.