Not one more vendor.
Someone on your side.
Always the same person, always reachable.
There are technical decisions worth years that get made in half an hour, usually with the wrong information. That's what consulting is for: someone who knows your systems, who tells you how things stand even when the answer doesn't suit them, and who picks up when you call. Without opening a ticket and without buying six months up front.
Fifteen years on the same problems.
We don't do everything: system integration and automation, for long enough to have already seen the problem you're about to describe - and to recognise it when it really is a new one.
- 15
- Years of experience
- 60+
- Projects delivered
- 7 years
- Average partnership
- 100%
- Clients by referral
The number that counts is the last one: none of these projects came from a tender. They all came because someone gave our name.
Every choice stays written down. Including the one not to do it with us.
On every project we keep a decision log: what was chosen, when, why, and what was ruled out. It serves us six months later, and it serves you if someone else carries the work forward one day. This is a real extract, with the names changed.
The data layer runs on PostgreSQL, not MySQL.
The data layer needed a database. The in-house team knew MySQL and was already running it on two applications.
The questions the client wanted to be able to ask were all about deep relations and time windows: on Postgres they take a tenth of the time to write and hold up better as the data grows. The learning curve for the team was two days, and we went through it together.
MySQL. More familiar, but we would have written three times the code to compensate - and that code would have been theirs to maintain.
Shipping is bought, not built.
The client had asked us to quote for handling couriers, labels and tracking inside the management system. It was the biggest piece of the project.
A third-party product does exactly that, with every courier already in it and kept up to date by someone else. Building it would have cost forty days and been worse the day after. We only did the integration: two days.
Our own quote. We take no commission on that product and we don't resell it: it was simply the right thing.
The data refreshes overnight.
The initial request was "the data always up to date". It's the request everyone makes, and almost never what's needed.
We went to look at who actually opens the reports: nobody before nine. Real time cost three times as much and would have loaded the management system during working hours, slowing down the people entering orders.
Continuous sync. It can still be added later on single tables: the data model doesn't change.
AI waits until the data is ready.
There was budget and there was an appetite to start straight away with an assistant answering questions about company figures.
The data wasn't normalised yet. An agent would have answered badly, and inside the company the blame would have gone to AI rather than to the foundations. Data layer first, the rest six months later - it shipped and it works.
Starting immediately. Easier to sell and much worse to use.
We stay on the management system that's there.
The ERP vendor was proposing migration to the new version as a condition for fixing some open issues.
We read the specification together with the client and asked the vendor the questions on their behalf. The migration fixed two problems out of nine and opened three more. That money went into the data layer, which fixed seven.
The migration. It wasn't a sale of ours in either scenario - which is exactly why we could say so.
The map of the systems
What's there, how it's connected, where the data flows and who touches what. A drawing and a document, not a diagram recalled from memory on a call.
The decision log
What you see above. Every choice with its date, its reason and the discarded alternative - so that in two years nobody reruns the same argument.
The operating notes
How to run it, what to check, what to do when something breaks. Written for whoever works inside it, not for whoever wrote them.
It's written to be read by anyone, not just by us. If another vendor carries the work forward one day, this is what they need, not a call with us.
We don't resell licences. When we recommend something, we make nothing on it.
Bespoke means we have nothing to place with you.
There's no product of ours that ends up in every proposal. Which makes it far easier to tell you what you actually need.
- 01
Listening comes first
The first meeting isn't a demo. We look at how you work now, who does what, where time is lost and what already works well. Everything we propose afterwards only makes sense if this part was done unhurried.
- 02
Bespoke, not off the catalogue
We have no product of our own to place in every project. Every proposal starts from what you already have: what works stays where it is, we only add the piece that's genuinely missing.
- 03
Including solutions that aren't ours
If a product does the job better than we would, we say so and integrate it for you. We don't resell licences and we take no commission: that's why the advice can be taken at face value.
- 04
Technical counterpart to your vendors
With whoever sold you the ERP, with the agency, with whoever runs the hosting. We speak their language but we're on your side: it matters most when someone has to work out whether a quote or a deadline is honest.
- 05
Always the same person
Whoever takes the first call is whoever does the work. There's nobody in between relaying things and nobody rotates at the end of the quarter: a year from now, the person answering remembers why you chose that way.
- 06
We know how to say it isn't needed
Sometimes we close a meeting saying the problem can be solved without us, or with far less than was asked for. It costs a project and saves someone years of maintenance.
No tickets. A direct contact, and an answer the same day.
Support doesn't go through a portal and doesn't have a case number. There's a direct contact - phone or email - with the person who knows the project, and the answer arrives within the day. When it's genuinely urgent, it arrives sooner.
trace "the report stopped updating"
- open a ticket on the portal10 min
- first line asks you to rephrase+ 1 d
- escalation to second line+ 2 d
- they call back to understand the context+ 3 d
- whoever did the work has left+ 5 d
- answer8 d
- you call, or write an email2 min
- answer from whoever knows the projectsame day
no case number
A direct contact
Phone and email of the person running the project. Not a switchboard, not a support address, not a form.
An answer the same day
Always, even just to say when we'll get to it. Knowing someone has read it is half the problem.
And when we can, we come
Not everything is solved remotely. If the project allows it we'd rather be there in person: half a day on site watching how people work beats three calls.
Bought in pieces. Not in months.
There's no minimum contract to sign and no annual package to burn before it expires. You pick the way that suits you, and you can change it along the way.
By the hour
Small packs of hours, used when they're needed and not expiring at the end of the month. It's the right way when the need is intermittent: a few questions, an intervention now and then.
→ no expiry
Light retainer
A few guaranteed hours a month, the rest as used. It works when you want someone who knows the systems to be around anyway, including the months when nothing happens.
→ pause it whenever
By intervention
You agree on one thing to solve and a spending cap, not a period. If it closes early, it closes early: there are no hours to fill.
→ ends when it works
In all three cases you can stop and pick it up again. Nobody has stayed because of a contractual lock: the average collaboration lasts seven years, and there has never been an automatic renewal.
We aren't the right choice for everyone. If the specification is already written and all that's needed is someone to execute it head-down, there are bigger and faster outfits than us. We're useful when there's still something to decide - and when it matters to always speak to the same person.