Waseem Ilyas — Notes Waseem Ilyas runs Automancer, a UK automation consultancy helping small businesses use AI and practical digital systems. A long career across web, design, instructional design, and product delivery. https://waseemilyas.uk/notes/ 2026-08-12T00:00:00.000Z Waseem Ilyaswaseem@automancer.uk Buy, build, or build the missing ten percent https://waseemilyas.uk/notes/buy-build-or-the-missing-ten-percent/ 2026-08-12T00:00:00.000ZThe standard advice is buy, don't build, and it is mostly right. It fails in a specific way for small businesses, and the fix is smaller than either option. What an operations platform is actually made of https://waseemilyas.uk/notes/what-an-operations-platform-is-made-of/ 2026-08-11T00:00:00.000ZThe phrase suggests something large and clever. The useful version is a short list of unremarkable parts, and the cost sits almost entirely in the joins between them. The unglamorous half of automation https://waseemilyas.uk/notes/unglamorous-half-of-automation/ 2026-08-08T00:00:00.000ZMost of the automation work that pays for itself is not clever. It is removing the retyping, the waiting, and the missing trail from a process that already works.