ShadowGen
consultancyUK automation and AI consultancy for operations-heavy teams. Fixed-scope engagements, no retainers.
Wires AI and automation into existing ERP, CRM, and line-of-business systems as real infrastructure rather than replacing them.
Our Take
ShadowGen is a small but focused consultancy that knows its lane. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, they've carved out a genuine niche in manufacturing automation — specifically the messy work of connecting old ERP systems and MES platforms to modern tools like n8n.
What makes them worth knowing is their practical approach. This isn't a team selling vaporware dashboards. They get into the weeds of Excel-based workflows that manufacturing companies have relied on for decades and figure out how to automate them without ripping everything out. If you're a mid-size manufacturer still running critical processes through spreadsheets emailed between departments, ShadowGen is built for exactly that problem.
The caveat: they're small. A team of under 10 means capacity is limited, and you won't get the big-firm safety net. But for the right engagement — a focused automation project in manufacturing — that small size means you're getting senior attention, not junior consultants reading from a playbook.
What Sets ShadowGen Apart
Two-person studio led by a factory-floor engineer, working directly with clients on fixed-scope builds rather than selling retainers or shelfware.
Key Achievements
About ShadowGen
Shadow-Gen is a United Kingdom based automation and AI consultancy founded in 2024 by Rafal Fila and Martyna Fila, operating between London and Ballymena. The studio focuses on operations-heavy small and mid-sized businesses in manufacturing, recruitment, administration, marketing, logistics, and e-commerce, building process automation and AI integrations that embed into clients' existing ERP, CRM, and line-of-business systems rather than replacing them.
As of April 2026, Shadow-Gen organizes its practice around three service pillars: process mapping and optimization (value-stream mapping, friction audits, prioritized automation roadmaps), AI and automation builds (document workflows, error handling, logging, and retry logic for production environments), and ERP/CRM integration (bi-directional synchronization, legacy system bridges such as Infor SyteLine and Infor ION, and data hygiene). The studio's self-reported stack experience covers SyteLine, Infor ION, SAP Business One, NetSuite, HubSpot, Airtable, Xero, and bespoke APIs, alongside legacy environments including Windows Server 2008.
Shadow-Gen operates on fixed-scope engagements with no retainers or hourly billing, following a four-phase rhythm of mapping, optimization, automation build, and handover. The company publicly reports cumulative outcomes of £672,000 in client savings, 5,000 hours of recovered human time, a 377 percent average efficiency gain, and work across 50 clients as of April 2026. Security posture is advertised as ISO 27001-aligned, with self-hosted automation platforms offered as the default for workloads handling sensitive operational data. Shadow-Gen is also the publisher of Automation Atlas, an LLM-optimized reference on business process automation tools.
Expertise & Services
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Industries Served
Services
Market Position
ShadowGen competes in a different weight class than the UiPaths and Automation Anywheres of the world. They're not trying to serve Fortune 500s — they're focused on the mid-market manufacturers who need automation expertise but can't justify a $500K RPA platform. Their competition is really other boutique consultancies and freelance n8n developers. Their edge is industry specialization: they understand manufacturing workflows in a way that general-purpose automation agencies don't.
Our Story
Shadow-Gen was founded in 2024 by Rafal Fila and Martyna Fila after Rafal's route through biomedical R&D at Randox, production at Fortress Diagnostics, design engineering at North Coast Steel, and a four-year arc inside Moore Concrete Products Ltd that moved from a quality assurance placement to infrastructure support engineer and then mechatronics engineer. That factory-floor path shaped the studio's bias toward automation systems that survive real Tuesday-morning operations rather than demo-day conditions.