Background: A 25-Person UK Fintech at the Pilot Stage
This case study is a composite based on patterns observed in the field. We do not fake named customers. The details reflect real engagement structures, technical constraints, and outcome ranges we have seen across multiple fintech and payments clients in Tier-1 markets.
The company in question is a 25-person fintech operating in the UK, focused on payment processing for small and medium businesses. They run a lean sales and support team that handles inbound leads, processes support tickets, and manages customer relationships through a CRM. Their stack includes a commercial CRM, a helpdesk platform, and a custom payment processing backend. The team is at the ‘Running Isolated Pilots’ stage of AI maturity, meaning they have experimented with AI tools but have not yet integrated them into core workflows. They recognize the value of AI but lack the process to implement it systematically.
Challenge: Multilingual Support and Lead Qualification Under Pressure
The company faced three operational pressures simultaneously. First, their support team was handling tickets in English, Spanish, and French, but they only had two multilingual staff members. This created bottlenecks and increased cost per support ticket. Second, their sales team was manually qualifying inbound leads from web forms and email, a process that took 4-6 hours per lead and delayed response times. Third, they were preparing for an ISO 27001 audit and needed to demonstrate that any new systems would meet their compliance requirements.
The deadline was tight: they needed to show measurable improvements within 8 weeks to justify the investment to their board. The headcount constraint was real, as they could not hire additional multilingual staff without significantly increasing their operating costs. The compliance requirement added another layer of complexity, as any AI system they deployed would need to handle sensitive financial data and customer contracts with appropriate safeguards.
Approach: AI Automation Audit and Document Extraction Pipeline
The team engaged Forfis to run an AI automation audit, a structured process that maps existing workflows, identifies the highest-impact automation opportunities, and designs a fixed-scope pilot. The audit took two weeks and produced a prioritized list of workflows to automate. The top two were document extraction for inbound lead forms and support tickets, and multilingual classification for lead qualification.
The technical approach used the OpenAI API for its strong multilingual capabilities and accuracy in document extraction. The team built custom REST API endpoints and webhooks to integrate with their existing CRM and support systems. The architecture was deliberately model-agnostic, allowing them to swap in open-weight models later if data residency requirements changed. Human-in-the-loop approval was built in for any data touching financial records or customer contracts. The system never stored raw documents longer than 72 hours, and all processing occurred within the UK data residency boundary.
Outcome: Measurable Improvements in 8 Weeks
The 8-week timeline included two weeks for the process audit and workflow mapping, three weeks for building and testing the document extraction pipeline, and three weeks for integration, pilot testing, and baseline measurement. The team shipped a measured before/after comparison on cycle time and error rate.
The results were concrete. Cost per support ticket dropped by 30-40%, as the automated extraction reduced manual data entry time. Lead qualification speed improved by 25-35%, as the system classified and routed leads in minutes rather than hours. Manual data entry time decreased by 15-20%, freeing the support team to focus on complex issues. The error rate in data extraction was 2-3%, well within the acceptable range for their use case. These metrics were tracked over a four-week pilot period with human oversight on all sensitive data.
Lessons for Similar Fintech Teams
- Start with a fixed-scope pilot, not full automation. The team focused on one workflow (document extraction) rather than attempting to automate all support and sales processes. This reduced risk and built confidence for rollout.
- Maintain human-in-the-loop approval for sensitive data. Any extracted data touching financial records or customer contracts required manual review before entering the CRM. This maintained ISO 27001 compliance and built trust with the team.
- Build the architecture to be model-agnostic. The team used the OpenAI API for its strong multilingual capabilities but designed the system to swap in open-weight models if data residency requirements changed. This future-proofed the investment.
- Measure baseline metrics before and after the pilot. The team tracked cycle time, error rate, cost per ticket, and lead qualification speed. These concrete numbers justified the investment and provided a clear path to rollout.
- Integrate with existing systems, not replace them. The custom REST API and webhooks kept the integration lightweight and avoided the cost and risk of replacing the CRM and helpdesk.
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