Services
You can have the useful part of the clever software without your files leaving the building.
Everyone is selling you something here. We would rather start with when it is not worth doing, because for a good number of firms your size it is not, or not yet.
Somebody has asked you about this — a partner, a client, or whoever sells you software. The pitch is always the same shape, and it always arrives with a great deal of confidence. What is usually missing is any account of where your files go while the clever part is happening.
The honest answer is somewhere else. Whatever your people type goes to a company you have no relationship with. So does whatever they paste in with it. Both get handled on machines you will never see, and an answer comes back. Plenty of businesses are fine with that trade. A practice holding records it is answerable for should at least make the trade on purpose.
One question comes before all of that. Do you need any of this yet? The honest use for it is the repetitive part of the week — the same summary, the same sorting, every Thursday. If two people are already handling that part and neither of them is drowning, there is nothing here for you this year, and we will say so.
What we handle
What that actually covers.
No list of products. The things that change for you, in the order they matter.
You can put a hand on the machine it runs on
Nothing your people ask it leaves the building. Nothing they show it goes into training somebody else's product.
Answers out of your own filing cabinet
Somebody asks a plain question and gets an answer drawn from your own documents, with a note of which one it came from. They can open that document and check it themselves.
The dull half of the week, handled
Summaries, first drafts, sorting what came in overnight, pulling four numbers out of a twelve-page report. The work nobody was ever glad to do.
Your people taught what not to paste into it
The quickest way to hand a client file to a stranger is to paste it somewhere helpful. We cover that in an hour, using examples from your own work.
A straight answer on whether it is worth doing
Often it is not, or not yet. We have said exactly that to firms who came in ready to buy, and we would rather do that than sell you a project you did not need.
One small thing first, and only then more
We pick a single job that happens every week and see whether it actually improves. If it does not, we stop, and you have given it two weeks rather than a year.
Somebody responsible for it afterward
Everything we set up, we keep running. You are not left with something clever that stops working in March and nobody in the building can fix.
No claim that it replaces anybody
None of the firms we have set this up for has hired fewer people because of it. What changed was what those people do with Thursday afternoon.
You do not have to decide anything to have this conversation. The review covers it along with everything else, and if the finding is that you should wait a year, the report will say that in those words. Ninety minutes on site, no obligation, and what we write is yours either way.
The rest of what we handle
- Day-to-day supportOne number, and someone who knows you.
- SecurityThe locks, and someone watching overnight.
- Backup and recoveryOpen Monday if the worst happens Friday.
- Audits and insurersA straight answer, in writing.
- Working from anywhereThe kitchen table, same as the desk.
- Moving your systemsA new office, or a new arrangement.
Start with the review.
Ninety minutes on site, a written report, and no obligation either way.