A map of how the work actually flows
Not the org chart. The real path a piece of work takes, with the systems, decisions and waiting time on it.
Where the money goes
Where software costs a growingbusiness the most.
Most of what a growing company spends on software is not the licence fee. It is the work people do around the tools, between the systems and after the handoffs - and almost none of it appears on an invoice.
Every mark here links to the engagement it belongs to. See the work →
Internal operations software is the work behind how a business runs rather than the product its customers see: the workflows, handoffs, spreadsheets and integrations between the tools a company already pays for. The expensive part is almost never the licence; it is the manual work those gaps create, which appears on no invoice. This page is for companies that know the back office costs too much but not yet what to buy about it.
Deliverables
What weactually deliver
The baseline nobody has ever captured
Volume, time per item, people involved, error and rework rate.
The system that replaces the manual part
Automation, integration, AI or internal software - whichever the problem actually calls for.
An operating arrangement after launch
Monitoring, incident response, vendor changes and an improvement backlog, so the system does not decay.
Where it starts
The four places thisusually shows up
Operations
Work moves between people by hand, and every handoff can stall.
- The same record is typed into two systems
- A spreadsheet sits between two applications
- Volume grows, headcount is the only lever
Finance operations
Invoices and approvals depend on somebody remembering to check a folder.
- Month end is a week of copying
- Approvals live in an inbox rather than a system
- Nobody knows the cost per document
Customer support
The answers exist, in documents and past tickets, and finding them is the job.
- The same answer is rewritten daily
- Response time depends who picks it up
- The demo worked, production did not
Reporting and data
The number the business runs on is assembled by hand, twice, differently.
- A report is rebuilt weekly from exports
- Two dashboards disagree
- The data cannot be queried safely
Proof
Engagements thatlooked like this
Bullhorn How Bullhorn connected recruiting data and automated repetitive recruiter work
No baseline was captured on this engagement.
Mula Mula - mobile payments across 40+ banks and service providers
No baseline was captured on this engagement.
Paved Paved - newsletter sponsorships from placement to reporting
No baseline was captured on this engagement.
Is this the right engagement for you?
Describe what is actually going wrong. We come back with the outcome, the engagement that fits and the price basis - after a free initial audit.
Recognise this?
Where operational costusually shows up
Nobody owns the middleSales, finance and delivery each have an owner. The machinery between them doesn’t.01
The improvement list never movesEveryone knows the three things that need fixing. They have been on the list for years.02
Software gets bought, not built into the workflowYou pay for tools your team works around, and a person fills the gap.03
Improvements are never measuredSomething got implemented, everyone agreed it felt better, and nobody can say by how much - which means nobody can decide what to do next.04
The knowledge is in three headsThe real process is not the one in the SOP. It is the one two long-tenured people carry around, and it leaves when they do.05
How we decide
Every engagement starts with a measurable operational problem.
That single rule is what separates this from a technology project. We do not start from what we could build. We start from the number we are trying to move.
- We agree the KPI before we build, in writing.
- We instrument it from day one, so nobody argues about it later.
- We keep optimizing against it after launch, because that is where most of the gain is.
- If the baseline says the workflow is not worth automating, we tell you that instead of building it.
In practice
What fixing operational costlooks like
Order → validation → ERP → invoice → follow-up
Order to cash
The path from a customer email to money in the bank, with the manual re-keying removed and the exceptions surfaced.
Invoice → PO match → approval → accounting
Procure to pay
Only the mismatches reach a person. The matches post themselves and leave an audit trail.
Systems → standardized data → dashboard
Operational visibility
Management sees throughput, backlog and exceptions today rather than in a spreadsheet on Friday.
Go deeper
The decisions behindthis kind of work
- ArticleSeven processes I would inspect first inside a $10M distributorWhere the recoverable time actually is in a mid-size distribution business, in the order I would look at it.
- ArticleWe mapped an order-entry workflow. Here are the 11 automation opportunities we found.One process, one afternoon of watching people work, eleven places where the business was paying for the same information to be handled twice.
- ArticleHow to calculate whether an AI automation is actually worth buildingThe arithmetic that decides it, including the two terms most ROI cases leave out and the reason recovered hours are not the same as saved money.
Questions
About operational cost
You start with the problem. Describe the process that costs you the most time or causes the most errors, and we work out which of those four things fits - often it is a plain integration and some software, not AI. Choosing the technology is our job, not yours.
Working software is demonstrated weekly from the first week, in every engagement. How long until it is in production depends on which one: four to six weeks for a rescue sprint, four to eight for an AI integration, eight to twelve for a workflow automation, and continuously from week one for an engineering pod. A legacy modernization runs two or more quarters but lands its first milestone inside the first one, and Product Care is ongoing on software that is already live. The window is agreed in writing before delivery starts.
All six engagements are Priced Outcome. Start with a free initial audit. We assess the scope, the stage the application is at, the condition of the codebase, the team the work needs and how it runs in production, then set out the proposed work and its cost upfront for your approval before delivery begins. That is why the audit comes before the number rather than after it. There is no rate card and no published starting figure.
The outcome, the measure and the acceptance conditions are agreed in writing before development starts, which is what makes that question answerable rather than a matter of opinion. If the route to the outcome turns out to be wrong, changing it is our delivery problem and not a new invoice. If the outcome itself has to change, we document and agree that before continuing.
The engagements are built around businesses doing roughly $5M to $30M in revenue, with software that matters to how they operate and someone who owns it. Outside that range we will still reply - we will just be honest about whether we are the right fit.
Not this one?
The otherengagements
Our roadmap needs a senior team behind it.AI-Native Engineering Pod3 months minimumPriced OutcomeThe AI demo has to work in production.AI Integration Sprint4-8 weeksPriced OutcomeManual work is eating our capacity.Agentic Workflow Automation8-12 weeksPriced OutcomeThe prototype cannot survive real users.Vibe Code Rescue Sprint4-6 weeksPriced OutcomeThe old system is too risky to change.Legacy Modernization2+ quartersPriced OutcomeNobody owns the product after launch.Product CareOngoingPriced Outcome
Before you commit
What you wouldbe signing up for
One bounded outcome
A named result, a fixed window and a scope agreed in writing before delivery starts.
- Commitment
- 4 to 12 weeks
- Price basis
- Priced Outcome
- The problem has an edge you can describe
- You want the cost known first
- Someone inside owns the result
A team against a roadmap
Senior capacity inside your codebase, moving a roadmap week after week.
- Commitment
- 3 months minimum
- Price basis
- Priced Outcome
- The work is continuous, not bounded
- Recruiting would cost a quarter
- You want the same people throughout
Ownership after launch
Monitoring, patching, upgrades and a named engineer for live software.
- Commitment
- Ongoing, cancellable
- Price basis
- Priced Outcome
- It is live and business-critical
- Nobody owns it out of hours
- The risk needs an owner
One agreed price for an agreed outcome, quoted after a free initial audit and approved before delivery begins.
Named quotes go here as clients approve them. See what the engagements produced →
Next step
Which part of your operation costs the most to run?
Usually it is the part nobody owns - the handoffs between the teams that do have owners. Point at it and we will come back with what it costs you today and what we would change first.