One agent, one job, done properly.
Hardy & Butler does not sell a platform and leave you to find a use for it. Each agent is named and does one job, because a narrow agent can be tested, measured and trusted, and a general one cannot. Here is the catalogue every build starts from. Yours will be a variation on one of them, shaped to how your business actually runs.
Twenty-four models. Pick the department, then the job.
Six departments, and each one is run by a director agent. The director holds that department's rules, decides what goes to a person, and answers for the four agents underneath.
Sales
Agent Mark
Sales Director
Mark holds the four sales agents together. Nothing is routed, quoted or chased without him seeing it, and he is the one who decides when a deal needs a person rather than another email.
Four agents report to Mark:
- Lead Router
- Proposal Builder
- Deal Chaser
- Pipeline Reporter
-
Reports to Agent Mark
Lead Router
Qualifies every enquiry and routes it within minutes.
- Reads web forms, inbound email and phone notes
- Scores against the criteria you set
- Assigns an owner and creates the CRM record
Measured on: enquiries answered inside ten minutes.
-
Reports to Agent Mark
Proposal Builder
Drafts tailored quotes from your own price book.
- Pulls the right products, terms and pricing
- Writes the covering note in your house style
- Holds it for a person to approve before sending
Measured on: hours per quote, and turnaround.
-
Reports to Agent Mark
Deal Chaser
Follows up stalled deals and logs every reply.
- Spots deals that have gone quiet
- Sends the follow-up you would have sent
- Escalates to the owner when the reply needs a human
Measured on: deals lost to silence.
-
Reports to Agent Mark
Pipeline Reporter
Rolls deal signals into one honest forecast.
- Reconciles CRM against emails and calendars
- Flags deals whose stage is not supported by activity
- Produces the Monday number with its workings
Measured on: forecast accuracy against actuals.
Marketing
Agent Sarah
Marketing Director
Sarah runs the four marketing agents. Nothing under her publishes itself: every draft, reply and report is written for a person to approve, and she keeps the record of who approved what.
Four agents report to Sarah:
- Content Drafter
- Campaign Reporter
- Competitor Watch
- Review Responder
-
Reports to Agent Sarah
Content Drafter
Drafts campaign copy in your house voice.
- Works from a brief and your existing material
- Produces variants for review, never for auto-publication
- Keeps a record of what was approved and by whom
Measured on: hours from brief to approved draft.
-
Reports to Agent Sarah
Campaign Reporter
Pulls spend and results into one weekly page.
- Reads the ad platforms, the CRM and the site analytics
- Puts cost per lead next to lead quality
- Sends one page, not a dashboard nobody opens
Measured on: time spent assembling reports.
-
Reports to Agent Sarah
Competitor Watch
Tracks named competitors and flags what changed.
- Watches their pages, pricing and public announcements
- Reports only material changes, not noise
- Keeps a dated history of what moved
Measured on: how long a competitor change goes unnoticed.
-
Reports to Agent Sarah
Review Responder
Drafts replies to reviews and escalates the bad ones.
- Drafts a reply within your tone rules
- Never posts without approval
- Routes anything below your threshold to a named person immediately
Measured on: time to respond, and unanswered reviews.
Finance
Agent David
Finance Director
David runs the four finance agents. He works to tolerance rather than to instinct: a clean match goes through, and anything outside the rules stops with the reason it stopped written next to it.
Four agents report to David:
- Invoice Chaser
- Purchase Matcher
- Month-End Assembler
- Spend Watch
-
Reports to Agent David
Invoice Chaser
Chases late invoices politely, on schedule, until paid.
- Works the aged debtor list on your ladder of reminders
- Stops the moment a payment or a dispute lands
- Hands anything contentious straight to a person
Measured on: debtor days.
-
Reports to Agent David
Purchase Matcher
Matches invoices to orders and flags the mismatches.
- Reads the invoice, finds the order and the delivery note
- Approves clean three-way matches within tolerance
- Queues everything else with the reason it stopped
Measured on: invoices touched by a human.
-
Reports to Agent David
Month-End Assembler
Assembles the month-end pack and lists what is missing.
- Gathers the schedules and reconciliations you always gather
- Produces the pack in your format
- Sends one list of what it could not find and who owns it
Measured on: working days to close.
-
Reports to Agent David
Spend Watch
Flags spend that breaks the rules you set.
- Reads card, bank and purchase data daily
- Tests it against your policy, not a generic one
- Raises an exception with the evidence attached
Measured on: policy breaches found before month end.
Operations
Agent Paul
Operations Director
Paul runs the four operations agents. His half of the business is the work that only ever fails quietly, so he is built to escalate on the day something slips rather than the week after.
Four agents report to Paul:
- Inbox Triage
- Document Reader
- Job Scheduler
- Supplier Chaser
-
Reports to Agent Paul
Inbox Triage
Reads the shared inbox, sorts it, drafts the replies.
- Categorises and prioritises every message
- Drafts the routine replies for one-click approval
- Escalates anything urgent or unusual by name
Measured on: time from arrival to first reply.
-
Reports to Agent Paul
Document Reader
Extracts the fields from documents and files them.
- Reads PDFs, scans and photographs
- Pulls the fields you actually use
- Flags low confidence rather than guessing
Measured on: documents needing manual re-keying.
-
Reports to Agent Paul
Job Scheduler
Books work around real constraints, not ideal ones.
- Holds skills, travel, availability and priority together
- Proposes the schedule and waits for a person to release it
- Re-plans when the day goes wrong
Measured on: jobs completed against jobs planned.
-
Reports to Agent Paul
Supplier Chaser
Chases suppliers for dates and updates the schedule.
- Tracks every outstanding order against its promised date
- Chases before the date, not after it
- Updates the plan and tells whoever is affected
Measured on: late deliveries discovered late.
Customer
Agent Emma
Customer Director
Emma runs the four customer agents. She answers what your own documents can answer, hands everything else to a named person, and reports back every question she could not answer so you can fix the source.
Four agents report to Emma:
- Front Desk
- Call Handler
- Onboarder
- Complaint Router
-
Reports to Agent Emma
Front Desk
Answers the common questions and hands off cleanly.
- Answers only from your own approved material
- Says it does not know rather than inventing
- Hands to a person with the full history attached
Measured on: questions resolved without a person.
-
Reports to Agent Emma
Call Handler
Takes calls out of hours and books the callback.
- Answers, understands the reason for the call and captures the detail
- Books the callback into a real diary slot
- Sends the summary before anyone picks up the phone
Measured on: missed calls.
-
Reports to Agent Emma
Onboarder
Walks new customers through setup and flags the stalls.
- Runs your onboarding steps in order
- Chases the customer for what is outstanding
- Tells you when somebody has stopped moving
Measured on: days to first value.
-
Reports to Agent Emma
Complaint Router
Spots a complaint early and gets it to a person.
- Recognises a complaint before it is labelled as one
- Routes it by severity to a named owner
- Starts the clock and tracks the response
Measured on: complaints resolved inside your own SLA.
People
Agent Claire
People Director
Claire runs the four people agents. She keeps hiring, onboarding, policy and absence moving without HR becoming the bottleneck, and she refuses to answer where the handbook is silent.
Four agents report to Claire:
- Applicant Screener
- Starter Pack
- Policy Answerer
- Absence Reporter
-
Reports to Agent Claire
Applicant Screener
Screens applications against criteria you wrote down.
- Applies your written criteria consistently to every applicant
- Records why each decision was reached
- Never rejects without a human confirming
Measured on: time to shortlist, and consistency of decisions.
-
Reports to Agent Claire
Starter Pack
Runs the onboarding tasks for every new starter.
- Raises the accounts, kit and induction tasks
- Chases the owners who have not done theirs
- Confirms day one is actually ready
Measured on: starters ready on day one.
-
Reports to Agent Claire
Policy Answerer
Answers staff policy questions from your own handbook.
- Quotes your handbook and links the clause
- Refuses to answer where the handbook is silent
- Reports the questions it could not answer so you can fix the handbook
Measured on: policy questions reaching HR.
-
Reports to Agent Claire
Absence Reporter
Assembles absence and rota data into one view.
- Pulls from rotas, timesheets and leave records
- Highlights patterns worth a manager's attention
- Produces the report without anybody exporting a spreadsheet
Measured on: hours spent assembling absence data.
Do not see yours? These are patterns, not products. Most first agents turn out to be a variation on one of them, shaped to how your business actually runs.
The systems you already run.
Twelve of the systems we connect to most often. Your agents work inside them, with the same permissions your team already has.
Up to three in a First Agent, and eight in an Agent Team.
- Google Workspace
- Zapier
- Xero
- Outlook
- Sage
- Slack
- Microsoft 365
- HubSpot
- Teams
- Salesforce
- SharePoint
- QuickBooks
- Google Workspace
- Zapier
- Xero
- Outlook
- Sage
- Slack
- Microsoft 365
- HubSpot
- Teams
- Salesforce
- SharePoint
- QuickBooks
A model is a starting point. Your business is the specification.
We map the job as it is really done.
Including the exceptions, the workarounds and the person everyone asks when it goes wrong. That person's knowledge is usually the actual product.
We fence it.
What the agent may do on its own, what needs approval, what it must never touch. Written down and agreed before a line of anything is built.
We build it small and put it live.
One workflow, in production, in weeks. A pilot that never touches real work proves nothing.
We measure it against the number we agreed.
Not activity, not usage. The one figure we said would move.
Hardy ships with every agent on this page.
The catalogue above is the half of the company that does the work. This is the half that means you can let it.
Gatekeeper
Hardy holds the list of things an agent may never do on its own authority: spend, send outside the business, change access, delete. Those requests wait for a named person.
Reviewer
Anything outside the agreed list is looked at before it happens, not after. Low risk and within the rules proceeds. Anything else stops and asks.
Ledger
Every action is written down, with what it used, what it decided, who approved it and when. A record a person, or an auditor, can actually read.
Brake
One switch pauses an agent, one pauses all of them. It is in your hands, not ours, and we test it with you on go-live day.
Evidence
Once a quarter Hardy shows you what the agents actually did: volumes, approvals, exceptions, escalations, cost to run, and the one number we agreed to move. If it has not moved, the same meeting says so.
Tell us about those tasks that never land on time.
You do not need to know what an agent is, how it works, or which one you need. Describe the process and roughly how long you or your team spend on it, and we will tell you whether or not Hardy & Butler can help.
£1,500, credited in full against your first agent. Not VAT registered, so no VAT is added.