A clay model street of seven small shops, one of them a plain general dealer

  1. Own the software that runs what you're best at

    Your software is the same as everyone else's. Your business isn't.

    What you're best at lives in spreadsheets, WhatsApp and a few people's heads.

  2. Own the software that runs what you're best at

    Most software you need already exists. Use it off the shelf.

    Invoicing, projects, chat. Installed, kept standard, and upgrading itself for years. Keep these systems simple.

  3. Own the software that runs what you're best at

    The software that wins you work doesn't exist yet. You have it built.

    The way you win work is not on any shelf. Built into software, it stops living in people's heads.

  4. Own the software that runs what you're best at

    You own it. Your competitors cannot.

    Standard software where standard works, your own where it doesn't. No fee per person, and the code is yours to take anywhere.

Ordinary software should come off a shelf.
What you're best at should be built into software you own.

Two different kinds of software, and the mistake is treating them the same. Never pay to customise the first. Never rent the second.

A clay shopping street. Nomsa's shop sits between a greengrocer and a hardware shop, and gains a lit glass machine room on its roof that no other building on the street has.

The ordinary.

Invoicing, projects, chat. Bought, kept standard, running on a server that belongs to you. That is the Starter Pack.

The part that's yours.

The way you win work is on no shelf, because anything you can buy your competitors can buy too. That part gets built, and it belongs to you outright.

You own all of it. No fee per person, and the code is yours to take anywhere.

Sound familiar?

Ask most businesses what they are best at and the answer comes straight away. Ask which system it lives in, and it goes quiet. It is in spreadsheets, WhatsApp and a few people's heads, and some of it has no system at all.

  1. 1

    The same customer details typed into three different systems.

  2. 2

    You find out on Thursday what you needed to decide on Tuesday.

  3. 3

    A quote takes days because the answers live in four places.

  4. 4

    One person knows how the process really works. They are on leave.

  5. 5

    Every new hire adds another per-seat licence, on every tool.

None of this is a people problem. The way you actually work was never built into a system, so your people carry it themselves.

Which is which

Most of what your business does is ordinary. Some of it isn't.

A clay machine standing dark against a shop back wall, then lit
The middle of the same machine row, coming on
The far end of the machine row, coming on last
The custom machine, dark, then wired in with its porthole burning amber

The part that's yours

Anything you can buy, your competitors can buy too.

The ordinary.

Invoicing is invoicing. Leave requests are leave requests. Buy standard software, keep it standard, and leave it alone.

Customers don't choose you because of how your invoicing works.

The cost of changing it.

Customising the ordinary is how businesses pay twice, once to build the change, then again every time the software underneath moves on.

Why the part that's yours isn't sold.

The way you actually win work is not on any shelf, because a vendor's whole business depends on selling the same thing to your competitors.

So the work is telling them apart, system by system. Most businesses get it backwards: the money goes into customising the ordinary, and the part that actually wins work gets bought off a shelf.

Two Doors

Buy the ordinary. Build the part that's yours.

A clay machine with a bank of six small brass card drawers on top, its porthole glowing teal

CRM

A clay machine with a small striped signal flag on a brass mast, its porthole glowing teal

Projects

A clay machine with a brass gramophone horn on top, its porthole glowing teal

Chat

A clay rooftop with an observatory dome, a brass telescope, a radar dish and a lattice mast

Custom software

When nothing on the market fits

The part customers choose you for, built into software that belongs to you.

How it works

Starter Pack

The ordinary things, done the ordinary way

A CRM, project tracking and team chat, online in days. You pay for the server, not for every person who logs in.

See what's in it

Which is which gets decided one system at a time, and only after somebody has looked at how you work.

What actually changes

Nomsa's counter. Before, she reaches up a shelf with an open paper ledger in front of her. After, she faces the customers and the orders rack behind her is lit.

Work that stops

Nobody retypes the same customer into a second system. Nobody chases a colleague for something a system already knows.

Time your people get back

They stop being the wiring between systems and go back to the work you hired them for. What is left is the work that needs judgement.

What your customers notice

They stop hearing “let me find out and come back to you”.

The fetching, the copying and the chasing is machine work. The conversation with your customer is not.

What clients say

“They built the BondPro website exactly the way we wanted it, including our custom bond and transfer cost calculators. Friendly team, quick to assist, and very easy to work with throughout the whole process.”

Strauss Smit

BondPro · Review on Google

“An excellent team who knows their stuff, conceptualise solutions proactively, and is an absolute pleasure to work with.”

Marion-Rose Banks

Humanicate · Folio · Review on Google

“An experienced team that delivered a world class, data driven application that looks good and works great. My customer loves me.”

Kevin Joubert

Medeq · Review on Google

How it went for them

BondPro, Folio and Medeq are custom builds, owned by the businesses they were built for. ReadyRun is our own.

Medeq

Medeq

Two development partners customised the software until it could not be upgraded. This one left it alone.

A third attempt, with the engineering paid out of a share of one revenue line rather than up front. Every bought part stayed standard, and only the two pieces that did not exist got built.

Read the case study

BondPro

The landing page was already working. The one thing it needed could not be bought.

Humanicate Folio

Every advocate needed a presence worth having, and commissioning one website at a time did not scale.

ReadyRun

We were telling clients to own what they are best at, from inside somebody else’s free tier.

Owned means owned

Your data

Your data and your software are yours. Open source where it makes sense, no fee per person, and it can run anywhere. Hosting is handled for you, until you would rather it was not.

Your code

Your code is conventional, documented and tested, and it sits in your repository. Custom software used to mean depending on the person who wrote it. That is the part that changed.

Your way out

You can replace us without pain, and that risk sits on our side of the table.

A clay model of Nomsa with one hand resting on her own machine and a brass key in the other, its porthole lit amber and its five cables running down into brass sockets in the floor

Start by finding out which is which

  • A straight answer on which of your systems are ordinary and which are not
  • The routine chasing and copying automated first, before anything else changes
  • Owned tools online in days, with no fee per person
  • Custom software you own outright

Starter Pack

Three apps, one server, one price.

A CRM, project tracking and team chat, installed and run on infrastructure you own. You pay for the server, not for each person who logs in.

SEE THE STARTER PACK