COBE Construction Inc.
COBE Construction came to us ahead of a heavy billing cycle with a clear ask: cut the busywork in Accounts Payable. “Our staff spend a lot of time reviewing subcontractor applications for payment and processing them.” Forms often weren’t submitted accurately, which meant “a lot of back and forth with emails.” Hours piled up on manual checks instead of higher-value work—one teammate was spending about 36% of her week on this alone.
The process was entirely manual: emails came in, PDFs were downloaded and reviewed for missing signatures, dates, and mismatched totals, corrections were requested, documents were re-reviewed, and the data was entered by hand. It was tedious, error-prone work that consumed hours better spent elsewhere.
The approach was simple on purpose: make the helpful action the default, surface issues at the right moment, and keep people in control. Why this worked: Defaults do the work: checks run automatically; agents review instead of hunt. Small wins that compound: minutes per document turned into hours back each week. Human-in-the-loop: oversight stays with the team, which built trust and adoption.
