Resident Engineer · Operations
One senior engineer, on fixed days every week, inside the systems you already run. Referrals, orders and requests stop being re-keyed from email, the status report builds itself, and your team spends its time on the work instead of the paperwork. Each fix goes live with the hours measured before and after.
The first month
Week one
The audit and a measured backlog
Weeks two to four
First fix live in your tenant
Every month
One-page report: hours saved against baseline
Throughout
Everything delivered is monitored
Intake, approvals and reporting, fixed one process at a time.
Each fix goes live with the hours measured before and after.
Sound familiar?
From heads of operations, service directors and COOs. If three apply, this page is for you.
You are not unusual
6–10
hours a week is the typical first saving for organisations of 5 to 50 staff.
15–25
hours a week for organisations of 50 to 100 staff.
5–8
weeks is the typical payback on the first automation.
From UK SME automation benchmarks published in 2026. This is one vendor’s own deployment data, not an independent survey, so treat it as indicative. Invoice chasing, order processing and status enquiries were the most common first workflows. The week-one audit is there to find your equivalent.1
What a Resident Engineer is
A Resident Engineer is a senior DataCactus engineer who works inside your organisation on fixed days each week, with the people who do the work, and puts fixes into production rather than into a slide deck.
Large technology vendors now call this a forward deployed engineer and reserve it for their biggest customers.2 We do the same work, on the Microsoft platform you already pay for, for organisations of 50 to 1,000 staff, at a price that makes sense for one department.
1
Your engineer sits with the team, maps the processes that cost the most hours, and measures each one: hours per week, volume, how long things take, how often they go wrong. You get a prioritised backlog with a baseline against every item.
2
The engineer builds the first item in your tenant, tests it with your team, puts it live and records a short handover. Then the next one. A small fix ships every few weeks; a bigger one every four to six.
3
One page. What went live, hours saved against the baseline, what is next, one recommendation. You decide the order of the backlog; we advise.
4
Monitoring and fixes for every item delivered are included while the engagement runs.
What you get
Not included, in writing
Microsoft, Azure and AI model consumption (you pay Microsoft directly; we estimate it per backlog item). Changes to your source systems. Same-day or out-of-hours response. Work outside the named department unless the backlog is re-agreed. Anything that needs access not granted by the end of week two.
What we build
Ordered by how often it is the first item on the backlog.
Referrals, requests and orders arriving as emails, PDFs, Word files and scans are picked up, read, classified and turned into a drafted record or assessment. A person reviews, corrects and approves before anything is recorded. Our Intake Agent and referral pipeline are the starting point.3
See referral automation →Certificates, insurance, DBS and other checks read on arrival, stored against the right supplier or person, with expiry alerts sent before the date, not after.
Requests, supplier onboarding and threshold-based approvals on Power Apps and Power Automate, with an audit trail. Paper approvals went digital ahead of an audit for a property management company.
Read the case study →The data that lives in a dozen spreadsheets brought into one model, so status and performance reports are produced from one place. We started this with a national charity, one function at a time.
Read the case study →Rotas, bookings and capacity pulled from wherever they are kept into a single Power BI view, so the week ahead can be seen at a glance.
One log with the same fields everywhere, and dashboards that show trends and overdue actions without anyone compiling them.
Assets, contracts, suppliers or incidents in one application, with an owner and dates on each record, the steps enforced and the reporting drawn from the same data. Part of Business Applications.
See Business Applications →Customers, families or commissioners are told where things stand by email or Teams message when the record changes, without a person writing each one.
If your first problem is not on this list, it goes on the backlog anyway. The list is what we have built before, not the limit of what we build.
What we measure
Turnaround from receipt to decision
The number a commissioner or customer feels
Hours per week spent re-keying
Time that returns to the service
Backlog size
What is waiting, and for how long
Error and rework rate
Fewer corrections downstream
Proof
Referrals arrived by email as bundles of PDFs and Word files, often with scanned pages. Each one was opened, read and classified by a person. Documents are now picked up automatically, read and classified by AI, and turned into a drafted internal assessment that a person reviews and approves.3
A mailbox → a completed pack
The team starts from a finished internal pack, with every referral recorded and approved.
The systems we work in
Service and case systems
The plumbing
Where the work arrives
These are the ones we meet most, not the limit. We can work with any platform you already run. We do not ask you to buy a new platform, and we pick the most adequate tool for the job, whether that is Power Automate, an Azure Function or n8n.
Security and data
Inside your tenant
Everything is built in your Microsoft 365 and Azure environment, under your identity, permissions and policies. Your data does not leave it.
Data protection
A data processing agreement on every engagement. Where AI models are used, they run through Azure OpenAI in your subscription, in the UK region you choose.
Licences and consumption
Estimated per backlog item before it is built, paid by you directly to Microsoft. No reselling, no mark-up.
Access
We ask for the access each item needs, in writing, and we work through your existing change process for anything that touches production systems.
Price and terms
Resident Engineer · One
£3,500 a month
One day a week
Resident Engineer · Two
£6,500 a month
Two days a week
Prices exclude VAT and your Microsoft and Azure consumption.
Nothing to pay if week one disappoints
If the audit and backlog at the end of week one are not worth continuing with, say so and there is no charge.
You keep everything
Solutions, documentation and the runbook are yours on payment. We keep the right to reuse our general components and know-how.
Who it is for
A good fit
Heads of operations, service directors and COOs in organisations of 50 to 1,000 staff, including charities, care and education providers, that run Microsoft 365 and handle referrals, orders or requests by email. It suits teams whose volume is growing faster than headcount and who have no engineer of their own.
A poor fit
If you have a single problem, our One-Problem Automation is cheaper and faster. If you need a new case-management or ERP system chosen and implemented, we work with what you have; we are not a systems integrator. Or if the process changes every few weeks and nobody owns it.
FAQ
No. A contractor sells you days and you manage them. You buy a fixed monthly fee for named days, a measured backlog you own, monitoring of everything delivered, a monthly report and accelerators we bring. The engineer manages the work; you set the priorities.
The minimum is three months because the first month is mostly audit and the first build. After three, it is monthly.
It is yours, with the runbook, the solution inventory and a quote for ongoing cover of what was built.
Yes. Anything that reaches a record or a recipient passes a review step where a person checks, corrects and approves it. That is how our referral automation runs.
We build inside your Microsoft tenant, under your own permissions and policies, with a record of what was received, extracted and approved. What your regulator or commissioner needs to see is agreed in week one.
In your Microsoft tenant and Azure subscription, in the region you choose. It does not come to us.
Bring your most re-typed process to a 30-minute call.
Tell us what arrives in the shared mailbox and what happens to it next. We will tell you what the week-one audit would measure, what the first backlog item would probably be, and whether Resident Engineer or a one-off automation is the right fit.
Sources