Observe before you prescribe.
The best improvements come from understanding the work as it is, not from applying a framework imported from somewhere else.
Good systems make work easier. The principle holds wherever structure shapes how work happens — chemistry, engineering, organizations. Coleman Intelligence applies it to your workflows.
Structure drives function.
That’s the lens Eric has carried since his earliest work as an electrochemist, and the perspective he brings to every system he studies, builds, or improves.
After completing his PhD in analytical chemistry, Eric joined Intel as a process engineer, building chips with nanometer-sized transistors. Same principle, larger scale: every step in the process — temperature, timing, alignment, chemistry — depends on every other step. The structure of the whole system determines what’s possible inside it.
An opportunity then took him back to the lab. As a postdoctoral researcher at Argonne National Laboratory, Eric joined the Markovic/Stamenkovic group — one of the few labs anywhere with the level of cleanliness needed to isolate the structure–function relationship at the atomic level. At that scale, the surface structure of a catalyst determines what reactions are possible. Change the structure, and the system behaves differently. Nature doesn’t work through brute force. It works through the right shape, in the right place. Nothing extra. Nothing wasted.
At Argonne, Eric started writing software to remove friction from his own science — first to run two instruments in parallel, then to handle the analysis automatically. As the tooling grew, he could run the analyses from his phone. He fell in love with building software. Not because he loved computers — because he loved watching the friction disappear. He switched careers.
He went on to engineer software at Synchrony Bank, Chowbus (their first iOS hire), Twitter, and Block. The same principle operated in code: the architecture of a system shapes what it can do, what it can’t, and how easy or hard the work feels for the people inside it.
Across those companies, Eric gravitated to the same kind of work — building frameworks and developer tools that made other engineers’ work easier. Many of those tools outlived him at the companies he left, because a good system keeps making work simpler long after it’s been built.
Along the way, he built and shipped his own products through SciCoTherapy Labs, his app studio: Smart Spend, a personal budgeting app, and Remote Codetrol, a mobile platform for AI agents.
Coleman Intelligence is all of that brought together as a consulting service for organizations. Most operational pain isn’t caused by the work itself — it’s caused by the structure surrounding the work. Fragmented tools. Redundant steps. Manual handoffs. Poor visibility. When the structure is wrong, no amount of technology or effort fixes the function. When it’s right, the function takes care of itself.
That’s what we mean by workflow engineering.
Coleman Intelligence is based in Columbia, South Carolina, working with firms across the Midlands and remote engagements throughout the Southeast — Charleston, Charlotte, Greenville, Augusta, and beyond.
The best improvements come from understanding the work as it is, not from applying a framework imported from somewhere else.
A clearer process often beats a new tool. We aim for the smallest intervention that meaningfully reduces friction.
A recommendation that doesn’t become reality isn’t an improvement. We can help carry the work into operation.
Based in Columbia, South Carolina. Available for remote engagements across the Southeast.