Case Study

    From 331 hours to 15 minutes

    How a UK PR & digital marketing agency cut its prospecting cycle from 331 hours to 15 minutes — in one 90-day engagement.

    Sector
    PR & digital marketing
    Location
    United Kingdom
    Size
    ~20 employees
    Team
    Digital PR

    Where they started

    331 hrs

    Cycle time per prospecting round

    <1%

    Value-added efficiency

    2.5 hrs

    Actual value creation out of 331 hours

    17+

    Manual steps per prospect

    One round of prospecting meant keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink checks, Google Maps research, email finding, draft writing, and outreach. 17+ manual steps per prospect. 331.75 hours of cycle time. And less than 1% of that time was actually creating value. The rest was clicking, copying, cross-referencing, and waiting.

    The engagement

    1. 1. AI Strategy Workshop

      Half-day

      Sat with the department heads. Identified the waste in prospecting. Scored and ranked the opportunities.

    2. 2. AI Readiness Audit

      14 days

      Digital gemba sessions. Mapped 17 steps. Found 331 hours of waste with less than 1% value creation.

    3. 3. 90-Day Sprint

      13 weeks

      Built an autonomous prospecting platform. 15 minutes from data to client.

    4. 4. Advisory Retainer

      Ongoing

      Monthly strategy. Quarterly roadmap. 3 follow-on projects launched.

    What we built

    • Automated Analytics

      Multi-source data pulls replace 7 manual research steps

    • Prospect Scoring

      Automatic quality checks eliminate manual vetting entirely

    • Draft Generation

      Communications drafted into Google Sheets, ready for review

    • Slack Notifications

      Team gets pinged when prospects are ready, no monitoring needed

    • Direct Client Sending

      Approved prospects go straight to clients from the platform

    Where they ended up

    15 min

    From trigger to reaching the client

    99.9%

    Reduction in cycle time

    0

    Manual steps in the pipeline

    3+

    Follow-on automation projects launched

    331 hours of manual work eliminated per cycle. The team redeployed to revenue-generating client work. The platform extended to 3 additional automation projects.

    Sound familiar?

    • Is your team spending hours on repetitive research that adds almost no value?
    • Do multiple teams duplicate the same work without seeing each other's output?
    • Have you tried automating individual tasks but never mapped the whole system?
    • Do you know what percentage of your team's time actually creates value?
    Find your first AI win — freeStart where this agency started — the AI Strategy Workshop →Go deeper: AI prospecting for agencies →