People ask about the timeline because they are worried about three things: a project that drags on for months while normal work piles up, a constant stream of requests for data, access, and meetings, and the possibility of handing over something important and getting back something that does not quite work.
These are reasonable concerns. Every one of them is addressable with specific numbers. Here they are.
Phase one: the Clarity Scan
The Clarity Scan takes roughly 10 business days from the intro call to the delivered report. The structure has five steps: a short intro call, payment, discovery interviews with your team plus a targeted questionnaire, five days of independent analysis, and a 45-minute debrief.
The intro call is brief. We learn the basics of your business, confirm the scope of the diagnostic, and walk through the agreement. No preparation is required on your end.
After payment, we schedule discovery conversations with the people who do the work. These are the interviews that give the analysis its depth: we ask about daily routines, tools, handoffs, and where time disappears. We also send a targeted questionnaire to capture what conversations miss. This is the step that makes the Clarity Scan diagnostic-grade rather than surface-level.
During the five working days that follow, we review your calendar patterns, email volume and flow, tool usage data, and any workflow documentation that exists. We do not require custom reports or IT involvement. We ask for read-only access to the tools most relevant to the audit scope: typically your calendar, email client, and the main system where client work is documented. We look, we do not touch.
The debrief call takes 45 minutes. We walk through the report findings, explain the methodology behind each cost estimate, and answer questions. The report belongs to you regardless of what you decide at the end of that call.
No disruption to your operations. The analysis runs in the background.
Phase two: the Sprint
A Sprint is six weeks. The structure below is what a standard first Sprint looks like. Subsequent Sprints follow the same cadence.
- Week 1: Mapping and preparation. We complete the detailed workflow design for the first automation target, which was identified and prioritised in the Clarity Scan Opportunity Matrix. You attend one 30-minute kickoff call. We configure access to the relevant tools, test the connections between systems, and prepare the build environment. Nothing is changed in your live systems yet. Everything happens in a staging configuration first.
- Weeks 2 and 3: Build. This is the phase with the least client involvement. We build the automation against the design agreed in week 1. You may receive two or three questions by email about edge cases: what should happen when a client enquiry arrives outside office hours, or how to handle a specific exception that the standard flow does not cover. Average time required from you across both weeks: around 20 minutes, total. No calls.
- Week 4: Parallel testing. The automation runs alongside your existing process. Both systems operate simultaneously, so you can compare the outputs before committing to the transition. You review what the automation produced and confirm it matches expectations. We hold one 30-minute review call to address anything that needs adjustment before go-live.
- Week 5: Handover and live transition. The automation goes live. Your manual process is retired. You receive a documentation package: a plain-language explanation of what the automation does, how to modify the most common settings without our involvement, and what to check if something appears to behave unexpectedly. One 60-minute handover call where we walk through the documentation together.
- Week 6: Monitoring buffer. We watch the automation for its first two weeks of live operation. If something behaves in a way that was not anticipated, we fix it within the same Sprint. This is not optional — it is included in every Sprint and built into the fixed price.
What access we require
For the Clarity Scan: read-only access to the tools we are auditing. We cannot identify what is costing time without seeing how the tools are actually used. We request view access — no admin rights, no ability to modify data.
For the Sprint: build access to the tools we are connecting. This typically means creating a dedicated service account or API key scoped to the specific workflow. Every access granted is documented in the project brief and revoked at Sprint close if you prefer to remove it. We never request administrative access to business-critical systems.
The parallel testing week exists precisely to prevent disruption. When the automation goes live in week 5, it is not an experiment — it has already been running correctly for a week, producing outputs you have reviewed and confirmed. The switch from manual to automated is a retirement, not a replacement. The old process stops because the new one is already working.
What you own at handover
At the end of week 6 you own what was built. The automation runs in your tools, on your accounts, with no MEIKAI-specific dependencies. The documentation explains what each component does. The workflow logic is transparent and editable. The configuration settings are accessible to anyone with standard admin rights to the relevant tools.
If you choose not to continue with a Continuity plan after the Sprint, the automation continues to operate. It does not require an ongoing relationship with us to function. The goal is not a dependency. It is a working process that you understand well enough to maintain.
A note on scope
A Sprint addresses one or two workflow changes, not ten. The Opportunity Matrix in the Clarity Scan report ranks findings by impact and implementation complexity. The Sprint tackles the highest-value items first. This is deliberate: a focused engagement that delivers a working result in six weeks is more valuable than a sprawling project that delivers something in six months, if at all.
The findings that are not addressed in the first Sprint do not disappear. They remain in the report, documented with their cost estimates and implementation notes. When the first Sprint is done and the team is comfortable with the new workflow, the second Sprint picks up the next item on the list.
"I expected a longer timeline. Six weeks from kickoff to something working felt almost too fast. By week 4 I was watching it run in parallel and thinking: this is actually going to work."
Principal · Architecture studio · Canton VaudIf you decide not to proceed after the Clarity Scan
The Clarity Scan is a standalone engagement. The report is yours. There is no obligation to proceed to a Sprint, and no follow-up sales process. If the numbers in the Opportunity Matrix do not justify implementation for your situation — because the savings are too modest, the timing is wrong, or you want to address the findings internally — that is a legitimate outcome.
What we have found is that the report itself changes how firms think about their operations, regardless of whether they proceed. Putting specific numbers next to tasks that previously had no cost attached changes which conversations get had internally. That value exists independent of any subsequent engagement.
Wondering if this applies to your business? Ask Kai. It knows the details.
No disruption to your operations.
An intro call, discovery interviews with your team, five days of independent analysis, one debrief. The report maps your workflows, costs each one, and ranks the opportunities. Fixed price. Yours to keep.