Published by NewsPR Today | July 2025
If you’ve recently gone down the rabbit hole searching for the best automation tools for your consultancy, you have my sympathy. The results are, to put it mildly, all over the place.
One tab tells you to stitch together HubSpot and Zapier. Another scream that Make.com is the only way forward. Meanwhile, half the industry still seems to be running on good ol’ spreadsheets and a prayer. It’s a mess, and it’s easy to feel like you’re the only one who hasn’t cracked the code.
We’ve been there. Being a service-oriented company, efficiency is our obsession. Therefore, we made the decision to investigate further, test a few theories, and challenge the status quo. This listicle isn’t like the others. It serves as a synopsis of our research and a springboard for discussion about what will truly be effective for agencies and consultants in 2025.
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The Classic Stack: Powerful, Pricey, and a Bit… Clunky
For years, the gold standard for a growing consultancy has been the “Duct Tape Stack.” You know the one:
- A CRM (like HubSpot or Pipedrive) to manage leads.
- A “glue” tool (like Zapier or Make) to connect things.
- A project management tool (like Asana or Trello) for delivery.
- An email marketing platform (like Mailchimp) for follow-ups.
This setup is powerful, no doubt. But let’s be honest about the drawbacks. It’s expensive, with multiple subscriptions adding up. It’s fragile; one little change to an API and your whole workflow breaks without warning. And most importantly, it’s reactive. It triggers when something happens in another app, not as a seamless part of your core work.
This leads us to the biggest challenge we all face.
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The Unsolved Pain Point: Your Automation Isn’t Where Your Work Is
Here’s the core of the problem: what’s your most critical, unsolved automation pain point? For most consultants we talk to, it’s client onboarding and proactive follow-ups.
Think about your current process. A client says yes. What happens next?
Maybe you manually send a welcome email, a contract, and an invoice. Then you create a folder in Google Drive, set up a project in Asana from a template, and add them to your CRM. It’s a dozen little steps, and it’s all manual, time-consuming, and prone to error.
Even with the Duct Tape Stack, you’re still trying to get App A to talk to App B via App C. It feels disconnected because it is disconnected. The automation isn’t happening where you’re managing the client relationship.
Our Big Bet for 2025: The Rise of the “Workflow-First” Platform
After testing various setups, we had an “aha!” moment. The future isn’t about finding a better “glue” to connect our separate tools. It’s about using a single platform where the automation is built-in and workflow-aware.
Imagine Zapier, but built directly into your CRM or project management tool.
Instead of triggers like “New row in Google Sheet,” your triggers become part of your actual consulting process:
- When a deal stage is changed from Proposal Sent to Won…
- When a client project status is marked as Awaiting Feedback…
- When an invoice is 3 Days Overdue…
This is a complete game-changer. Automation becomes proactive, not reactive. It’s triggered by the work you’re already doing, right inside the platform where you’re doing it.
Example Scenario: A Smarter Client Onboarding
Let’s see what this looks like in practice.
The Old Way (Duct Tape Stack):
- Client signs proposal (PandaDoc).
- Zap! A deal is updated in HubSpot.
- Zap! A new project is created in Asana.
- You manually go to Asana, apply a template, and assign tasks.
- You manually draft and send a welcome email with a link to a scheduling tool.
The New Way (Workflow-First Automation):
You drag a client’s card to the “Won” column in your all-in-one CRM.
That’s it. That one action automatically triggers a workflow that:
- Sends a templated welcome email, pulling in the client’s name.
- Creates a project from your onboarding template and assigns tasks to your team.
- Generates the first invoice.
- Sets an internal task for you to personally check in with the client in 7 days.
It’s seamless, professional, and saves you an hour of admin on every single new client.
So, What’s Your Stack? Let’s Compare Notes.
We’re convinced that by 2025, the most successful and least-stressed consultants will be the ones who ditch the duct tape for a unified, workflow-first platform. The technology is finally there.
But this is a conversation, not a lecture. We want to hear from you.
- If you’re a consultant, agency, or service provider, what does your tech stack look like today?
- Are you successfully automating your client onboarding and follow-ups? What works and what doesn’t?
- What’s that one automation challenge you just can’t seem to solve?
The perfect stack is the one that fits your process. Let’s put our heads together and figure out what’s going to work for all of us in the year ahead.
