Ripcord · AI & Operations Transformation

Your team spends how much time on reporting?

Your data lives in six places that don’t talk. We drop in, connect it, and layer AI on top. One operator parachutes into your company, maps how it actually runs, and puts the busywork on autopilot. Then we hand it off and pull out. The capacity you get back compounds for years.

The problem isn’t that you need more software. It’s that nothing you own talks to each other.

Your systems each hold a piece of the truth, and none of them share it. The CRM knows a deal closed, but billing doesn’t, so someone keys the invoice in by hand. A payment lands, and someone reconciles it against the books line by line. A lead comes in, and someone copies it from the form to the CRM to the spreadsheet the sales team actually checks.

Every Monday, someone rebuilds the same report from numbers that three systems already have. That’s not a software problem; you’ve bought plenty of software. It’s that nothing you own talks to each other, so your people spend their days being the connection. AI can’t fix a business whose own systems can’t agree on what’s true. So that comes first.

3–6

Disconnected places the average employee’s data lives every day

0

Of that data leaving your infrastructure when we build it right

$0

Of new software needed before the value is already there to capture

1 mo.

From drop-in to automations running in production, not next fiscal year

How a Ripcord engagement works

Pull the cord. The operator drops in.

No 40-slide deck from a team that hands you a binder and leaves. One operator parachutes into your business, learns how it actually runs, maps every system, connects what’s disconnected, and builds the automations that take the manual work off your team’s plate. The person who diagnoses it is the person who builds it. Then we hand it to your team and pull out.

Map everything

Every system, every storage point, every place a person re-keys data by hand. We find where the time and money actually leak.

Connect the systems

ERP, CRM, billing, project management, and chat wired into one source of truth. Your systems start sharing what they know instead of each holding a piece.

Automate the busywork

Agents and workflows take over the repetitive, rules-based tasks: routing, reconciliation, reporting, follow-ups, intake, data entry.

Hand it off, you own it

Documented, running on tools you own, with your team trained to operate it. We stay on if you want us, not because you’re locked in.

Strato Doumanis

Led by Strato Doumanis

The operator who maps it, connects it, and builds it. Embedded in your business, not managing from a distance.

What every engagement includes

The Audit

A full map of your stack, your data, and the highest-return opportunities, ranked.

Integration layer

The systems you already pay for, connected into one flow instead of six islands.

Automations and agents

Built on n8n and your own infrastructure. No per-seat SaaS tax that never ends.

The ROI model

A projected return, in dollars, built on your own numbers before you commit.

Documentation and handoff

Your team owns and operates the system. We’re here if you want us.

How an engagement compounds

01 / AUDIT

We map and score

Every system, storage point, and manual handoff. The biggest opportunities, ranked by return.

02 / CONNECT

Systems start to flow

Disconnected tools get wired into one source of truth. Data stops being re-keyed by hand.

03 / AUTOMATE

The busywork disappears

Agents and workflows take over the repetitive work that used to eat your team’s week.

04 / COMPOUND

Capacity comes back

Hours return to the business, your people move to work that matters, and the return keeps growing.

It starts here, from $3,500

The Audit: where the time, money, and capacity are hiding, in your own numbers.

You don’t take our word on the return. Before anyone touches a system, we map where your business is leaking effort, what AI and automation can recover, and what that recovery is worth, on your books. Six deliverables, one honest picture.

01 / Diagnostic

Stack & Data Map

Every system, subscription, and storage point your team touches, and where your data is actually stranded versus where it should live.

You get: a single diagram of how your company really runs, not the org-chart version.

02 / Diagnostic

Efficiency Heatmap

Where time and money quietly leak: the duplicate entry, the manual reconciliation, the reports rebuilt from scratch every week.

You get: the highest-return fixes ranked, so the first dollar spent is the one that pays back fastest.

03 / Opportunity

Automation Opportunity Map

Every repetitive, rules-based task a machine should be doing instead of a person: routing, intake, follow-ups, data entry, reporting.

You get: a build list, scoped and sequenced, with the effort and payback of each item.

04 / People

Role Elevation Plan

A clear read on who on your team is spending their week on low-value admin, and the higher-value work they are freed to take on once the system carries that load.

You get: a path to put your best people on the work that actually needs a human.

05 / Structure

Consolidation & Capacity Model

Which functions collapse into automated workflows, where overlapping effort can be consolidated, and exactly how much labor capacity returns to the business as a result.

You get: the capacity math in plain numbers, so you can plan around it with confidence.

06 / Decision

ROI Model & Roadmap

A phased plan with a projected return in dollars, so the build decision is a business case, not a leap of faith.

You get: a go or no-go you can take to the board, backed by your own numbers.

Three ways to run it

Pick your depth. Most start in the middle.

The same method at three depths: a focused proof of concept, the full company picture, or an enterprise-grade deep dive. Whichever you choose, you leave with numbers you can act on.

Diagnose · Proof of concept

Recon

$3,500

About 1 week

Scope: one department or workflow chain

A scouting pass to prove the approach before you commit.

  • Stack and data map for one focused area
  • Efficiency heatmap for that workflow
  • Top automation quick-wins identified
  • A directional ROI estimate
  • A clear read on whether the full Audit is worth it

Diagnose · Full company

The Audit

$10,000

2 to 3 weeks

Scope: your whole operation

The complete picture, every deliverable, your own numbers.

  • All six deliverables, across the whole company
  • Full stack and data map
  • Efficiency heatmap and automation opportunity map
  • Role elevation and capacity model
  • Complete ROI model and phased roadmap

Diagnose · Enterprise depth

Deep Audit

$20K+

4 to 6 weeks

Scope: multi-entity or complex stacks

For larger organizations where the stakes justify the depth.

  • Everything in the Audit, in greater depth
  • Stakeholder interviews across departments
  • On-site working sessions
  • Data-quality deep dive
  • Vendor and contract consolidation analysis
  • A board-ready presentation of the findings

The Audit stands on its own. If the numbers don’t justify a build, we tell you, and you keep the roadmap. Start there.

Why you can trust the drop

Three kinds of proof, none of them borrowed.

We won’t show you a fake case study for a transformation we haven’t run. We’ll show you the parts it’s made of, all real, and let you judge.

The capability

Every piece, already shipped

The work inside a Ripcord engagement is work we’ve delivered for real clients. Different packaging, same proven parts.

  • Connected-systems infrastructure that saved a client team hundreds of hours a week
  • An organization moved from manual dues and tickets to one fully integrated platform
  • A site rebuilt to run like a newsroom, 19K to 47K sessions in seven months

The method

We did it to ourselves first

Our own company is the sandbox. The stack we sell is the stack we run, built before we offered it to anyone.

  • A bot that routes incoming work, classifies it, and drafts estimates from our books
  • A Monday briefing that assembles itself from meeting notes and the team’s agenda
  • Deposits that hit the bank and reconcile in chat on their own

The operator

Trusted in the room

The part of this that can’t be productized is judgment. Here’s what people say when we’re the ones in the room.

  • On record from a national media executive, on data and AI specifically
  • An association president: we changed the way they do business
  • References available who speak directly to what happens when we drop in
michael-mckinney-vp-bridgetower-media

“I bring Strato into the work that matters most. UX, front-end, data, AI, he has a point of view on all of it, and it’s one I trust.”

Michael McKinney, Vice President of Digital Product, BridgeTower Media

Why this is different

Four things a consulting deck won’t do.

One operator, embedded

Not a slide deck from a team that leaves. The person who maps your business is the one who builds the fix.

Built on what you own

n8n, your databases, your cloud. We connect the tools you already pay for instead of adding another forever-subscription.

We did it on ourselves first

Our own company is the sandbox. Everything we sell, we built and ran in our own operations before bringing it to yours.

You own all of it

Code, workflows, schemas, prompts. Run it yourself or keep us on. The choice stays yours, not ours.

Who this is for

Signs your stack is costing you more than it should.

If two or three of these sound like your company, the Audit will pay for itself before the build even starts.

You keep buying software and somehow have more manual work.

Every new tool added a login and a place for data to hide, but the copying and pasting between them never went away.

Your ERP and CRM don’t talk, so someone re-keys between them.

The same customer, order, or invoice gets entered two or three times, and the numbers still don’t reconcile.

“Which number is right?” is a daily argument.

The CRM says one thing, billing says another, and the spreadsheet says a third. Someone reconciles them by hand before anyone trusts a report.

You want to use AI but every demo dies in a pilot.

The tools look impressive and then collide with messy, scattered data and never make it into how the company actually works.

You’re about to hire to keep up with volume, not value.

The next role on the org chart exists to move data and chase tasks, work a connected system should be handling on its own.

Reports take days to assemble from systems that already have the data.

Someone spends Monday rebuilding the same numbers by hand, from sources that could have produced them on their own.

How engagements scale

The whole arc, from audit to running systems.

Every engagement starts with the Audit. If the numbers don’t justify the build, we tell you, and you still walk away with a roadmap worth having. No 12-month contracts, no enterprise sales theater.

Diagnose

The Audit

From $3,500

1 to 6 weeks

The full picture, before a single system is touched.

  • Three packages: Recon, the Audit, and Deep Audit
  • Stack and data map of how your company really runs
  • Automation opportunity map, scoped and sequenced
  • Role elevation and capacity model
  • ROI model and phased roadmap, yours to keep either way

Transform

The Embed

$60K – $120K

4 to 8 weeks embedded

The operator, inside your business, building the fix.

  • Everything in the Audit, executed
  • Your core systems connected into one source of truth
  • Automations and agents built on infrastructure you own
  • Your team trained to run it
  • Full documentation and handoff, no lock-in

Sustain & expand

Embed+ and Managed Ops

$3K – $10K / mo

Ongoing

We keep it running and keep finding the next win.

  • Monitoring, uptime, and maintenance of everything we built
  • New automations as the business changes
  • Spillover into the front of house: web, ecommerce, customer-facing AI
  • Quarterly efficiency review against the roadmap
  • Cancel anytime; you still own all of it

The honest version

If the Audit says the return isn’t there, we’ll say so.

We’d rather lose a build than sell you one that doesn’t pay back. That’s the whole reason it starts with the math.

Sitting on years of valuable data?

A Custom Knowledge Agent is the sibling to Ripcord, and a common Embed+ build: your archive, research, or member data turned into something your team or your subscribers can actually ask questions of. Same architect, same no-lock-in approach.

The math

Spend $100K. Get back $500K and more over three years.

Most companies don’t want to gamble on AI, and they shouldn’t have to. The return here isn’t a hunch. It’s recaptured capacity, eliminated rework, retired software, and faster cycles, modeled in dollars on your own books before you commit.

You invest

$100K

A single Ripcord engagement

You recover, over 3 years

$500K+

A return of roughly five to one

Where the return comes from (illustrative; your Audit models your own figures)

Recaptured labor capacity
the largest share
Faster cycles and revenue pulled forward
significant
Rework and errors eliminated
meaningful
Redundant software retired
often covers the Audit

Most of the return is capacity. It’s the hours, and the roles, you stop spending on work a system can do for you. As you grow, that’s volume you absorb without adding headcount, and people you redeploy to work that moves the business. We model your specific numbers in the Audit, so the figure you take to the board is your own, not ours.

FAQ

Questions we hear a lot.

Correct, and here’s why that’s fine. Every capability inside this is something we’ve shipped and can show you; the engagement that packages them is new. More to the point, you’re not betting on our track record, you’re buying an Audit that proves the case on your own numbers before the big decision. The first thing you get is evidence, not a promise.

A big firm sends a team to interview your people, hands you a deck and a roadmap, and leaves the building to someone else. We do the diagnosis and the build with the same operator, embedded in your company, working in your real systems. You end up with running software, not a binder.

Almost never. Most companies already own everything they need; the value is in connecting and automating it. We build on open tools and your own infrastructure, and the Audit usually finds redundant subscriptions you can retire, which helps pay for the engagement.

Your people stop spending their week on work a machine should be doing and move to the work that actually needs a human. The Role Elevation Plan in the Audit shows you exactly which hours and which roles come back to the business, so you can decide how to put that capacity to use. As you grow, it’s volume you absorb without adding to the payroll.

Good, you’ll need them to run it after we leave. We don’t replace your team; we parachute in, do the disruptive build they don’t have the bandwidth or the outside vantage to do, and hand it to them documented. The whole design is that you own it and operate it. We stay on only if you want us.

On your infrastructure, in your accounts. We connect your systems without exporting your data to anyone, and where sensitive information is involved, the architecture is built to keep it inside your walls. We don’t train on it, store it, or share it.

You don’t take our number; you build your own. The Audit models the return on your actual books, your actual labor cost, your actual volume. The figure you take to the board is yours, not a vendor’s slide. And if it doesn’t clear the bar, we’ll be the ones to tell you.

Start the conversation

Tell us what you’d want to ask your archive.

Send us a quick read on the systems you’re running and where your team loses the most time. We’ll write back with an honest take on what the Audit would likely surface and what it could be worth.

  • Strato responds to every inquiry personally.
  • No NDA required for an exploratory conversation.
  • Clear scope and a number before any work begins.
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