What we build
Internal business systems
The system a business actually runs on is usually a spreadsheet, a shared inbox and somebody's memory. It works until the business grows, and then it fails quietly, in ways nobody finds out about for a fortnight.
What it is
An internal system is the software your own people work in: where a job lives from enquiry to invoice, who is responsible for it now, what state it is in, and what happens automatically when it moves.
Dashboards and reporting are part of this rather than a separate purchase. A number is only useful if it comes from the same place the work is recorded, which is why reports bolted onto a system nobody uses properly always disagree with each other.
When a business needs one
- Nobody can answer how many jobs are open right now without opening three tabs
- The weekly report is assembled by hand, and the person who assembles it is expensive
- Two sources of the same number disagree and there is a standing argument about which is right
- A job gets missed occasionally, always at the handover between two people
- New starters take weeks to be useful because the process only exists in people's heads
What we can build
Capability, not a claim about work already delivered. What we have actually built and run is further down the page.
- A live board of what the team is working on and what state each job is in
- A screen that tells somebody what today is, rather than making them work it out
- Dashboards and weekly digests that arrive without anyone running a report
- Permissions, so a contractor sees their jobs and not your margins
- An audit trail, so a change can be traced to a person and a time
- Automations that tell you when they stop working, instead of failing silently
- Onboarding and training that lives in the system rather than leaving with the person
- Exports and integrations, so finance and the accountant get what they need without a request
How we approach it
We map what happens now before proposing anything, including the parts that only work because somebody is quietly compensating. Those are usually the most valuable things to fix and the least likely to be written down.
Then the smallest useful system goes live and gets used for real work. A system designed in full and delivered in full is a system designed around what people said they did, which is never quite what they do.
See it working
A short film of one of our own demonstrations, recorded from the running software. Every company in it is invented, and the link opens the real thing.
Juniper Events · Weddings and events entertainment
An extra hour asked for, priced, accepted, and only then added to the plan, with the brief reissued and acknowledged before the day counts as handed over.
Ironmere Plant · Gyms and leisure
A fault reported off the gym floor becomes a work order, a quote nobody can spend without approving, and a running figure for what the downtime costs.
Brackenhall Property Services · Construction and property maintenance
Every variation priced, sent, answered and captured, and a job that cannot be released for invoicing while there is a hole in the record.
Shift · Gyms, salons and nurseries
The block closes when the hour does, so nothing can be back-filled at five o'clock to make the day look tidy.
Things we have already built
Live in software we have delivered, and part of the 123 things we have built.
What the team is doing, live
You can see a bad week on the Tuesday, while there is still time to change it.
A screen that tells you what today is
The day starts already decided, so the first hour goes on work instead of triage.
Automations that tell you when they stop working
A broken automation announces itself the same day instead of being discovered by a customer.
A daily note when something looks off
You are told when something looks wrong, rather than being expected to go and look.
Numbers that cannot contradict each other
Every number in the system comes from one calculation, so nobody has to work out which screen to believe.
A record of who changed what, and when
When something looks wrong you can answer who did it in a minute, rather than reconstructing it from memory.
Onboarding a new person without doing it from memory
Every new person gets the same first week, and you can see at a glance what is still missing.
Training that does not leave when someone does
The way you work survives a resignation, and new people learn it without booking anyone's time.
What happens when a job is marked done
Every finished job produces the proof and the paperwork it should, without anybody remembering to.
Related to this
Tell us what you are trying to fix
Describe the job in your own words and we will tell you what we would build, roughly what it would cost, and whether something you can already buy would do it cheaper.