Should your next hire run operations?
For years the answer to more work was one more person. Now a lot of that work can run at AI desks your team approves. So which one does your company need first?
In the second quarter of 2026 about one in four job vacancies in Canada had been open for 90 days or more (Statistics Canada, 15 September 2026). Plenty of companies are waiting on a hire right now, and we'd bet some of them are waiting for a person to do work that repeats.
Sometimes the hire is the right call. But if most of the work is the same job done the same way across your tools, a person is an expensive way to move it from one tab to another.
What a hire takes
A salary from the first day
Canada's Job Bank puts the median wage for an operations manager in the Toronto region at C$65.92 an hour (Job Bank, wages updated 19 November 2025). At 40 hours a week that's about C$137,000 a year before payroll costs and benefits.
A search, then a ramp
Once you find the person they still have to learn how your company works. That's fair (nobody arrives knowing your returns process) and it takes months.
One person holds the work
What they know about your tools and your customers lives in their head. It leaves with them unless someone wrote it down, and the writing down is usually the job nobody had time for.
What Closed Loop does instead
Rather than describe it in the abstract, here is one job from start to finish. It's an example: a wholesale order arrives by email on a Thursday afternoon. Someone copies it into the order sheet, checks stock in Shopify, drafts the invoice and writes back to the customer.
We map it
In the first week we follow that order from the inbox to the invoice and write down who touches it and where it waits. What you get: a map of the job and the agent we'd set up to take it on.
We set up the desks around it
One agent reads the order, checks the stock and drafts the invoice and the reply in the tools your team already uses. What you get: the drafts waiting in the Slack channel you chose.
A person approves it
Nothing leaves your company until a named person on your team approves it. You also set a cap on what your AI can spend and you can switch any agent off. What you get: a record of who approved what, and when.
You see how it's doing every month
Every month you get a report on what each agent did and how often your team corrected it. (We can't show you a past one yet.) What you get: a report every month, so you can see which way each agent is moving.
Side by side
A hire gives you a person's judgement every day. Closed Loop gives you desks that run the repeat work and keeps a record of every approval.
| A new hire | Closed Loop | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | The search, then the months it takes to learn your business | One week on your real work with up to ten people |
| Who runs it | The person you hired | We do, and every agent has an owner on your team |
| When a team member leaves | What they knew goes with them | It keeps running on our cloud in a space that is only yours |
| Before anything goes out | Their judgement | A named person on your team approves it |
| Mistakes | You review their work the way you review anyone's | Your monthly report counts how often each agent was corrected |
| Cost | A salary and payroll costs from the first day | US$299 a month for your first three people, then by team size |
Where this leaves the hire
It still matters, and for some work it's the only answer. Managing people, running a floor or holding a key relationship needs someone in the room every day, and a desk can only take on the paperwork around that job.
If our first week finds little work that repeats, we'll tell you it isn't worth building. And you can do both: one person owns operations and the desks carry the repeat work they'd otherwise do by hand (that person makes a very good owner for the agents).
Three things worth doing this week
List the jobs that repeat
Write down every job your team does each week the same way. The free task map walks you through it.
Time one of them
Pick the one that annoys people most and note how long it takes each time for one week.
Ask who holds it
If the person doing that job left on Friday, who would know how to do it on Monday?
Questions
How do you price it?
US$299 a month covers your first three people and every desk, and the week check works out the price for your team. This price list is a proposal, and we haven't settled it yet.
Does it replace someone on my team?
No. It takes on repeat work and a person on your team approves what it does. Nobody on your team is scored or ranked.
How is Closed Loop different from other AI firms?
Other firms sell one piece of it: a tool to build agents, a tool that searches what your company knows, or a custom project that ends when it ships. We set up every desk your company needs as one product and we keep running it. When we read through the alternatives in October 2026 we didn't find anyone else selling it that way.
Who is it for?
Founders and operations leads. We start with companies that sell online on Amazon, Shopify or their own store.
Get your plan
Your next hire is still worth making. Make it for the work that needs a person.
Tell us how your week goes, and we'll show you where the time goes and which desks would take it back.