Bespoke systems · Organisation
Scoped per project
One system across every office and everyone on location, so the board steers the plan on today's figures.
Who it’s for
Established businesses with a large team across several offices, and people out on site, on the road or at customers' premises. Effort and headcount got you this far. Growth now comes from a strategic plan, and the board is steering it on figures that are weeks old.
What you get
- A live view for the board, built from the work as it is done, so decisions at scale rest on today's figures, not last month's
- One way of working in every office and out on location, so a large and growing team is not held up chasing each other
- A system that guides new starters through the job as they do it, not software to master first
- An app for your people on location that works with no signal and catches up when it finds one
- Discovery in your offices and out on location, because the real process is never the written one
- Migration off the old systems, with the history intact
What it ships
- Plant and tool hire across several depots, with kit booked out from any of them and logged on site
- Home care from several branches, with each visit logged in the client's home and cover found from any branch
- Inspections for a council service, with officers out on visits and each result in the office as it is filed
Scoped per project
- Timeline
- Four to eight months from kick-off to hard launch
- Payment
- 25% deposit on go-ahead, 50% on completion of the first build stage, 25% on delivery.
- Afterwards
- Hosting and support packages from £50 per month, plus VAT.
Growth by plan
Growth now comes from the plan, and the board has to steer it.
Effort got the business here
More work and more people built the business. The next stage is planned, and it rests on what the board decides.
The board is steering on last month
The figures come once a month, added up by hand from every office. To compete and decide well at scale, the board needs them as they are today.
Everyone does it their own way
Each office and each person on location does the same job a different way. Every new hire adds more chasing, checking and doing it twice.
New starters learn the software first
Someone joining spends weeks on the software and each office's workarounds before they are useful. The system should show them the job, not be a skill of its own.
Case study
The maintenance firm growing to a plan
A building maintenance firm with three offices and engineers out in vans on customers' sites every day. It has grown as far as hard work and more hands will take it. The board has a plan built on bigger contracts, and it needs to see which work pays.
Before
- Each office books and costs jobs its own way, and job sheets are paper, typed up the next morning
- A new engineer shadows someone for weeks to learn how that office does things
- The board gets the month's figures weeks after it ends, added up by hand from three offices
- Nobody can say which contracts pay, so the plan is steered on a hunch
With the build
- Monday, all three offices book the week's jobs into the same system, costed the same way
- The engineer opens the day's jobs in the van, with the access notes and the site history
- No signal in the plant room. Photos, parts and the customer's signature go on the job anyway, and send when the phone is back online
- A new engineer in their first week is taken through each job on screen, the same way in every office
- Before the board meets, it opens one dashboard: every office and every contract, what it cost and what was billed, up to the last job closed
The next contract is priced on what the last one cost, and the board steers the plan on today's figures.
A composite, not a named client. Mine are all under NDA.
The stages of a build
- 0Scope and costs
- 1Business discovery
- 2Front end
- 3Back end
- 4Test, fix and launch
Every build gets its own tracker page on this site: which stage it is in, what happened this week, and the scope you signed.
Going live
It goes live one office at a time.
- 1
One office goes first
One office and its people on location go live first, on real jobs, so every other office sees it working before its turn.
- 2
Old and new side by side
The old system stays on until the new one gives the board the same numbers.
- 3
Office by office
Each office moves across in turn, and people learn it on their own jobs, the way every new starter will.
- 4
The old system switched off
When the last office is across, the old system goes off for everyone.
Why there is no number yet
You cannot order a business system off a web page. These are floors, not quotes. What yours costs comes out of discovery, and you will have the number before you commit to a build.
Who I build for
My clients are SMEs and local authorities, all under NDA, so there are no logos here. On a call I can walk you through a build that looks like yours.
Start here
Tell me about the job
Describe what you want built, or the job you want rid of, and I'll tell you honestly whether this tier covers it.