Business Operations Audit and Systems Build for a Pre-Series A Startup
A 12-person startup was spending PHP 48,000 per month on overlapping tools with no documented operations. We audited their entire tech stack and operations workflow, eliminated the waste, and built the systems that got them investment-ready in 90 days.
Adam Raymond Belda
IT Operations Director / Co-Founder
Client
Philippines Pre-Series A Startup
Industry
Professional Services
Duration
90-day fractional CTO engagement
Engagement
Fractional Leadership
What an Operations Audit Actually Looks Like
In week one, we interviewed every team member — not just the founders. The questions were the same for everyone: what tools do you use every day, what takes the most time, what breaks most often, and what do you wish worked differently. We also reviewed 90 days of email and Slack history, looking for patterns: recurring questions that indicated undocumented processes, manual workarounds for broken systems, and decisions that were being made by the same person every time because no one else knew the rule.
What We Found
The audit produced 34 findings across six categories. The most financially significant: the startup was paying for seven tools that performed overlapping functions. Three different project management tools were in active use — none of them by the whole team. Two CRM platforms were running in parallel, with historical data in one and active deals in the other. Total monthly spend on redundant tools: PHP 48,200. Security findings were more serious: six former employees or contractors still had active access to company systems. Three of them still had edit access to the Google Drive folder containing the company's investor deck.
The 90-Day Build
Month 1: Rationalizing the stack. Six of the seven redundant tools were cancelled — the seventh was kept because it integrated with the client's primary banking partner. The team was migrated to Zoho One: CRM, helpdesk, project management, email campaigns, and accounting in a single subscription at 60% of the prior tool cost. Historical CRM data was migrated and deduplicated: 4,200 contact records cleaned to 2,800 accurate records. Former employee access was revoked within 48 hours of the audit finding. Month 2: Building the operations documentation. Seventeen core business processes were mapped using the SIPOC methodology from Adam's Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training. Each process document defined: who initiates it, what inputs are required, what steps are followed, what output is produced, and who is accountable. Month 3: The investor-ready operations package. A 12-month technology roadmap was written in business language — no jargon. The roadmap defined the three next tool implementations, the budget required, the business capability each would enable, and the risk of not implementing. This document went directly into the Series A materials.
The Results
Monthly tool spend reduction
PHP 48,200 eliminated in 30 days
Processes documented
17 core business processes mapped
Security exposures remediated
6 former employee accesses revoked
CRM data quality
4,200 records cleaned to 2,800 accurate contacts
Investor readiness
Operations roadmap included in Series A materials
Technology Stack
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