An operations audit, an automation plan, and a clean shutdown.

Context

A hybrid book publisher was running a 291-title production pipeline through a six-person team on a tangle of tools (project management, print and distribution vendors, storefronts) with real cycle times running two to four times longer than advertised. It needed to understand its own operation before it could fix it or, ultimately, unwind it.

What we built

We ran the engagement in two phases. First, an AI-native audit: we reverse-engineered the actual production workflow, built operations-master and vendor/subscription templates, modeled the eight-phase editorial pipeline (submission through post-publication) with clear RACI ownership, ran a labor-economics analysis and a three-scenario cost model, and proposed a phased AI-automation system across the existing tool stack. Then, as the business changed course, an orderly wind-down: a live infrastructure audit of five WordPress apps (~117 GB), Cloudflare 301 consolidation and DNS hygiene (49 dead records removed), a 96 GB backup cleanup, and a documented multi-SaaS teardown and archival runbook.

The value

• Gave the publisher a true picture of its own operation: real cycle times, labor economics, and pipeline ownership it didn’t have before.
• A concrete AI-automation roadmap mapped to the tools already in use, not a rip-and-replace fantasy.
• When the direction changed, the web estate was wound down cleanly: DNS, backups, and SaaS decommissioned to a documented runbook instead of left to rot.
• One accountable partner across the whole arc (audit, strategy, and shutdown), so nothing fell through the transition.