Fix the process.Then automate.
Layering AI onto a broken workflow only produces bad output faster. Meridian Loop Advisory works with leadership teams in Columbus to audit operational bottlenecks, deploy secure private-data automations and train staff on practical tools that save measurable hours every week.
- Location
- Columbus, Ohio
- Email the firm
- Weekday hours
- 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM
- Clients
- Companies of 10 to 250 people
01 · Services
Advisory, automation & AI governance
Fixed-fee diagnostic audits, production build sprints and team workshops for operating companies of 10 to 250 people, with no slide-deck theatre. A Book request starts with a reply, not an automatic appointment.
01.1 · Fees at a glance
- 01Operational workflow & AI readiness audit$2,400
- 02Custom workflow & AI automation buildoutfrom $4,500
- 03Team enablement & applied workshop$1,850
- 04Private knowledge base & cited search (RAG)from $5,200
- 05AI governance & acceptable-use policy$1,950
- 06Fractional operations & AI retainerfrom $2,200/mo
02 · Approach
Vendor-neutral engineering, measured in hours saved and error rates reduced.
Half the tasks pitched as “AI projects” are solved faster, cheaper and more reliably with clean API rules and database integrations; the other half genuinely benefit from structured language models behind human review gates. Meridian Loop Advisory takes no software vendor kickbacks, so it prescribes the simplest, safest architecture for your stack and hands you full ownership of every workflow it builds. How the firm works.
02.1 · Three steps
From discovery call to a running workflow
-
01
A 30-minute discovery call
Team structure, current software stack and the top operational bottlenecks are discussed to confirm the fit.
Before anything is charged
-
02
A two-week readiness audit
Real daily workflows are observed, data readiness and privacy needs are checked, and a ranked 90-day ROI roadmap is presented.
Fixed fee, agreed upfront
-
03
Build, train and hand over
The highest-return workflow is built and secured, staff are trained hands-on, and accuracy is watched for the first 30 days before full admin documentation is handed over.
The agreed date
02.2 · What every engagement carries
- 01 Baseline
- Current manual time and error rates are measured before anything is built, and a project that will not pay back inside 6 to 9 months is dropped.
- 02 Privacy
- Builds run on enterprise zero-data-retention APIs and private cloud tenants, so client records never train public models. A mutual NDA is signed before every audit.
- 03 Ownership
- You keep all source code, API credentials, workflow blueprints and SOP documentation, with no proprietary black-box middleware.
- 04 Fixed fee
- Every audit, policy engagement and build carries a defined deliverable list and a fixed fee agreed upfront.
03 · Gallery
Audits, workshops & blueprints
04 · Staff
Operations principals & automation architects
04.1 · Principal consultant
Marcus Ellery
Principal consultant
A former operations leader and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt with an M.B.A., Marcus Ellery leads workflow diagnostics, unit-economics modelling and executive roadmaps, drawing on twelve years running operations at regional logistics and home-health companies.
04.2 · Automation lead
Priya Raman
Automation lead
An AWS and Azure certified solutions architect with an M.S. in Computer Science, Priya Raman builds private RAG retrieval pipelines, CRM and ERP integrations and evaluation harnesses, after a decade of production systems work that began at a Columbus software consultancy.
05 · Reviews
Results from operating leaders
01
What impressed me most during the initial audit was the honesty. Of the six ideas I pitched, Marcus Ellery showed us that three did not need AI at all, just clean webhook syncs between our TMS and inbox, while two carrier-document checks were ideal for structured extraction. We now save more than 45 back-office hours a week on carrier packet verification, COI matching and POD exception triage, and everything lives in our own Azure account with no monthly agency hostage fees.
Marcus T., President, third-party logistics & freight brokerage
- Written
02
Our inside sales reps were drowning in 30-page PDF mechanical submittals, re-typing part specs into our ERP and missing bid cut-offs. Marcus and Priya mapped our quoting desk first, talked us out of an overpriced $60K vendor platform and built a private document-extraction pipeline with a side-by-side rep verification screen. Quote takeoff fell from 50 minutes to 7 per RFQ, volume rose 35% without new headcount, and the build paid for itself in eleven weeks.
Henrik S., COO, regional HVAC & commercial supply distributor
- Written
03
We had bought enterprise licences six months earlier and fewer than four people used them beyond basic email polishing. Tobias Reyes interviewed three of our senior project managers beforehand and built live exercises around summarising environmental site assessments and formatting client executive briefs. Our most sceptical senior engineers became daily users, because the quality guardrails were built right into the playbook.
Gavin R., Founder, B2B engineering & environmental consultancy
- Written
06 · Questions
AI security, ROI & implementation
06.1 · Answers
01 Will our confidential documents be used to train public AI models?
Never. Free and consumer chat accounts often train on what users type, so they are ruled out for business workflows. Every integration Meridian Loop Advisory deploys runs on commercial enterprise tiers or private cloud API endpoints, such as AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Google Vertex or the Anthropic commercial API, under contractual zero-data-retention and zero-training terms.
02 How do you stop AI “hallucinations” reaching client or financial work?
Three ways. Deterministic maths, accounting totals and compliance routing are handled by ordinary code, never by a language model. Internal knowledge tools use retrieval-augmented generation anchored to your own documents, with clickable page citations. And any external or high-stakes output stops at a human approval screen before it is sent or posted.
03 Who owns the code, prompts and workflows afterwards?
Your company owns all of it. Every script, API connector, workflow configuration, prompt template and governance policy lives inside your own cloud and software accounts from day one, documented so your IT manager or outsourced MSP can run it without us.
04 Why start with a $2,400 audit instead of building straight away?
Roughly 40% of the time, the tool a company thinks it wants is not where the real time or money is being lost. A two-week diagnostic prevents spending $12,000 automating an intake form when the true bottleneck is manual re-entry across three disconnected systems further down the line, and it gives fixed-fee certainty on every build that follows.
07 · Contact
Book an executive discovery call
Describe the workflow eating up your team’s week and a firm principal replies by email, or by telephone if you leave a number, during office hours to agree a time for a confidential 30-minute call.