Pitou: automated business development and opportunity sourcing

Finding and applying to contract opportunities as an independent consultancy requires monitoring multiple job boards and recruitment platforms daily, evaluating relevance against current skills and availability, crafting tailored responses, and tracking pipeline status.

This manual process consumed hours of non-billable time each week and was prone to missed opportunities due to inconsistent monitoring.

We built Pitou as a TypeScript-based browser automation platform using Playwright for reliable, headless interaction with job boards and recruitment platforms. The system automates the full pipeline: opportunity identification via automated scraping, relevance scoring and prioritisation against current capabilities, automated application submission with tailored responses, and response parsing and classification.

All activity feeds directly into Pantheon (our internal CRM) with reasoned data updates — the system doesn't just log actions, it explains why an opportunity was scored or classified the way it was.

Pitou now runs the Noble Insights business development pipeline end-to-end, from opportunity discovery through to application and follow-up tracking. Contract opportunities are identified, evaluated, and actioned within hours of being posted rather than days.

The CRM integration provides a complete, reasoned audit trail from initial discovery through to engagement, and the scoring system has significantly improved the signal-to-noise ratio in opportunity evaluation.