Migrating 60 workflows to self-hosted n8n

Challenge

Hours lost to copy and paste

Orders, leads and requests arrived by email and PDF, then were typed into other systems by hand — slow, error-prone and impossible to scale.

Objectives

What we set out to achieve

Automate the intake end to end, with people reviewing only the exceptions.

• -60%Manual handling
• 95%+Accuracy
• Same dayProcessing

Strategy

Automate the happy path, flag the rest

We mapped the process step by step and designed workflows where AI handles standard cases and routes anything unusual to a person.

Solution

Workflows with AI where it counts

n8n workflows read emails and documents, extract structured data with an LLM, validate it against business rules and write it straight into the ERP or CRM.

Technology

The stack behind it

Chosen for reliability, speed and easy ownership by the client team.

• n8n8n
• OpOpenAI
• ClClaude
• PoPostgres
• DoDocker
• SlSlack
• REREST APIs

Implementation

6 weeks, four phases

Weekly demos kept the client team involved at every step.

1. Week 1Process mappingInputs, rules, exceptions.
2. Weeks 2–3BuildWorkflows, extraction, validation.
3. Week 4Parallel runSide by side with the manual process.
4. Weeks 5–6Go-liveMonitoring, alerts and handover.

Results

More done with the same team

-80% Automation Cost, and the team now spends its time on exceptions and customers instead of data entry.