Every team has its own way of doing things. Sometimes that's just habit, but usually there's a reason behind it: a funder that wants the figures cut a particular way, a customer with unusual requirements, a regulation, or years of learning what works.
Off-the-shelf software has to ignore most of that. It's built for the average team, so whatever doesn't fit ends up somewhere else: in a spreadsheet beside the system, in someone's inbox, or in one person's head. Those workarounds are where the time goes.
Where the time actually goes
When we sit down with a team for the first time, the expensive things are rarely dramatic. They're small jobs, repeated every day by several people:
- Typing the same thing twice. Information arrives by email or on a form, and someone keys it into a spreadsheet, then into another system.
- Chasing. Working out who hasn't sent their figures, their timesheet or their sign-off yet, and reminding them, every week.
- Reconciling. Three copies of the same list that have drifted apart, and an afternoon spent working out which one is right.
- Pulling reports together. Days spent assembling figures that a proper system could produce in seconds, then doing it again when someone wants them cut another way.
None of these looks like much on its own. Add them up across a team and a year, and they're often the biggest cost in the whole process.
The workarounds never appear on an invoice, which is exactly why they're so easy to underestimate.
Software that fits removes the work itself
A system built around your process doesn't just tidy up the paperwork; it takes the workarounds away. Information is captured once and checked as it's entered, and then everyone who needs it can see it. Reminders go out on their own. The report your managers ask for every month is simply there, up to date.
One engineering company we work with started with a single job: collecting weekly time cards and chasing the late ones. Once that was in place, hours could be reported against each project's budget. Over the years the same system grew to cover enquiries, purchasing and the rest of the work. Each step paid for the next.
The money is in the running costs
Off-the-shelf usually wins on the cost of getting started. The comparison that matters is over several years:
- Licences that grow with you. Per-user pricing is cheap for five people and much less so for fifty, and you pay for features you'll never use.
- The cost of the workarounds. All those hours above, every week, for as long as the process runs.
- Mistakes. Data that's typed twice goes wrong eventually, and errors found late are the expensive kind.
Bespoke software costs more up front, but it does exactly what you need and nothing more. That keeps it simple to use and cheap to run, and it often pays for itself sooner than people expect.
When off-the-shelf is the right answer
We'd rather say this plainly: if a good product already does what you need, buy it. Accounts, email and payroll are solved problems, and building your own would be a waste of money. Bespoke makes sense for the work that's specific to you, the process that makes your team different and that no product quite fits.
Often the answer is both. Some of the most useful systems we've built sit alongside off-the-shelf tools and pass information to and from them, so that nobody has to type it in twice.
Start small
You don't have to replace everything at once, and we'd usually advise against it. Pick the process that causes the most pain, build something that fixes it, and get it in front of the people who use it within weeks. You'll know quickly whether it's working, and what's worth doing next.
That's how most of our longest-running systems began, with one problem solved well, and then the next.
Questions worth asking first
- Which jobs does your team repeat every week, and how long do they take?
- Where does the same information live in more than one place?
- Which report takes longest to produce, and who's waiting for it?
- Who will look after the software once it's built, and for how long?
If the answers point to a process that's outgrown its tools, we'd be glad to talk it through. You don't need a technical brief: just tell us what isn't working.