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AI × Data × Automation

You don’t need more tools. You need the outcome.

I help logistics, retail, finance and customer-service teams cut cost and kill repetitive work with AI automation, and I quantify the ROI before you commit a dollar.

I distill complex operations into clear, low-hanging fruit. Value and ROI first, technology second, no overpromising.

Sound familiar?

If any of these is you, we should talk.

  • I know I should be using AI, but I don’t know where to apply it.
  • I know AI can do a lot, but I’m not sure how much of my work it can actually handle.
  • I keep hiring admin staff for work that shouldn’t need a human.
  • I want to cut cost without breaking what already works.

Selected work

Proof, not promises.

Air-cargo ground operations and month-end reconciliation paperwork
Case 01 · Logistics

From five days to two hours

An accounting team hand-keyed a high volume of airway bills and reconciled them line by line against the operational cargo system. I built an automation pipeline that extracts, reconciles and cross-checks the lot, with a rule-based engine holding 97% accuracy.

5d→2hper cycle
97%accuracy
<2modelivered
Read the case
An iced latte on a warm wooden café counter
Retail

Retail analytics & launch intelligence

Deployed as a data scientist to build retail analytics and product-launch intelligence. Slotted in fast, shipped a deployed pipeline.

A customer-service contact centre
Customer service · Telecom

AI analysis of a service centre

AI-driven analysis of customer-service operations, turning call and ticket data into decisions leaders can act on.

A marketer reviewing an analytics dashboard
Marketing · SMAQ

Marketing analytics & reporting

Automated marketing analytics and reporting, the discipline behind our own product, SMAQ.

Ten years turning technology into results, trusted by global logistics companies and coffee retailers.


What I deliver

I don’t sell technology. I sell outcomes you can measure.

Anyone can rattle off GenAI, RAG, agentic. Buzzwords are cheap. What’s rare is someone who translates the technology into your business needs — and puts a number on it before you commit a dollar.

So every engagement starts with one question: where is your business quietly losing time or money, and what is it worth to fix? I distill complex operations into clear low-hanging fruit, quantify it, then my team builds the fix.

01

ROI diagnostic & automation roadmap

A sharp look at your operations to find the highest-impact, low-hanging fruit, with the ROI quantified before you commit. Usually the fastest money you’ll ever save.

02

Document & OCR automation

Kill the manual data entry. Invoices, airway bills, forms, statements: extracted, structured and reconciled automatically, with an accuracy engine that catches what humans miss.

03

Workflow & agentic automation

The repetitive operations that eat your team’s day. Reconciliation, cross-checking, routing, reporting, all handled by automation that runs around the clock and doesn’t churn.

04

Data pipelines & reporting

Stop stitching spreadsheets by hand. Reliable pipelines that pull your data together and put numbers you actually trust in front of you.

05

Analytics & decision intelligence

Dashboards and AI-driven analytics that turn your data into decisions, the same discipline I brought to retail analytics for a global coffee retailer.

Not sure which one is you?

That’s exactly what the free 30-minute ROI diagnostic is for. Bring one process, leave with a number.

Book the diagnostic

Short projects, scoped to deliver in two to six months. I work as a forward-deployed partner. I slot into your business, ship, and prove the value. I don’t do website builds or generic software development. I do outcomes.

How I work

Value first. Then tech. Every time.

Most vendors lead with the tool and hope the value follows. I run it the other way round: I distill complex operations into clear low-hanging fruit, prove the return, set the KPI, then build. Here’s the path from first call to compounding results.

  1. Free

    ROI diagnostic

    Bring one process that’s costing you. In 30 minutes I tell you whether it’s worth automating, and roughly what you’d save. No pitch, no obligation.

  2. Paid

    Company audit & user interviews

    A proper diagnosis: I sit with your team, map the real workflow, and rank the opportunities by return. You keep the findings whatever you decide next.

  3. Scope

    Project scope with clear KPIs

    We agree exactly what success looks like (the numbers, the timeline, the definition of done) before a line of code is written. I never overpromise, because I know what I’m doing.

  4. Build

    Agile, AI-powered delivery

    My AI-native team ships in short cycles with constant feedback and transparent progress. Because we build with AI, we also cover more comprehensive test cases and test plans, so quality holds as we move fast. You see it working as it’s built, and short projects land in two to six months.

  5. Next

    Evaluate, then the next win

    We measure against the KPIs, bank the return, and move on to the next low-hanging fruit. Value compounds instead of stalling after one project.

About

I speak business and technology, so you don’t have to choose.

Portrait of John Liu, founder of Common Analytics

For over ten years I’ve helped businesses turn technology into results across digital transformation, data analytics and automation. I’ve delivered for global operators in logistics and retail, building analytics and shipping automation that held up in the real world.

My background is deliberately double-edged: a finance and information-systems foundation, a master’s in data science and management information systems from the University of Sydney, and years shipping real automation in the field. That mix is the point: I can sit with an owner and talk P&L and risk, then sit with engineers and build the thing.

Today I run Common Analytics with a lean, senior, AI-native team. We use agentic AI to engineer fast without sacrificing quality, which is how a short project scoped for two to six months actually lands there.

  • 10+ years in digital transformation, data & automation
  • Clients incl. a global logistics group and a global coffee retailer
  • MSc Data Science & MIS, University of Sydney
  • Lean, senior, AI-native team
Free 30-minute ROI diagnostic

Curious what’s automatable in your business, and what it’s worth?

Answer a few quick questions so I come prepared with something specific to your business. I’ll bring a real, quantified opportunity to the call. If it’s a fit, we scope it. If not, you’ve gained clarity for free.

I take on work where I can find at least HK$50,000 in return. If that sounds like your situation, the diagnostic will pay for itself many times over.

One honest answer per field is all I need. Or email me directly at john.l@common-analytics.com.