Blog
Every article filed under Running a business. We write about how a company builds its own system without needing a developer to do it.
Everyone knows the revenue on a project. Very few know the margin - because the hours logged and the amount invoiced live in different tools. How to join two numbers you already have, and why the result unsettles most firms.
Nobody consciously chose three systems. They accumulated - each one solved a problem and added a new one. How the typical software stack comes about, where context leaks out of it, and what can be done without a big bang.
Documentation, data and communication usually live in three different tools that know nothing about each other. Here's what a workspace looks like when they're connected and share the same context.
Ask what a custom app costs and every supplier answers the same way: it depends. Here's a concrete range for three routes to a business system, what the price is made of, and why it's decided by the three-year total rather than the first invoice.
Task tools are excellent at what they do - they hold a list of work. What they can't answer is who that work is for, what it cost and what comes next. Five questions your task manager can't answer, and what to do about it.
An off-the-shelf CRM is designed for the middle of the market. Your company isn't the middle - so half the modules stay unopened and the things that really matter live in a spreadsheet on the side. How to tell you're paying twice.
Excel for numbers, WhatsApp for quick agreements, email for orders, Zapier to connect them, a separate app for invoicing. We calculated what that kind of split actually costs a company.
Excel is a great tool - until more than one person starts working on the same file. Here are the concrete signals that a spreadsheet has stopped being enough, and exactly what a database app solves differently.
