Know-how
Not every digitisation is a big project
Many business problems do not need a new system but a small tool that runs within days and can grow later.
A while ago I wrote that not every website has to cost 10,000 euros. The painter, the nail salon, the consultant just starting out do not need a marketing machine, but a clean basis on which customers can find and reach them. These days I mainly build software for processes rather than websites, and the thought applies there even more strongly.
The picture of the big project
When a process in a business becomes a nuisance, many owners immediately think of the big solution: new business software, a consulting project, months of specifications and training. Because that sounds expensive and exhausting, often nothing happens at all. The office assistant keeps typing the same data three times, the quotes keep getting written in the evening, and the receipts keep lying everywhere.
Yet in most cases the big project is the wrong idea. Very few of the problems I see in small businesses need a new system. They need a missing piece between the systems that are already there.
What a small tool can do
Three examples of the kind of work I mean:
- An interface. The online shop and the accounting program do not talk to each other, so orders are transferred by hand. One connection in between, and the data is entered once instead of three times.
- An automation. Every week a file arrives from the supplier, which someone opens, checks, restructures and loads into another program. A small tool does that, reports anything unusual and files the result.
- An internal tool. For an inspection process or a scheduling task, no standard software fits properly. A small application of your own maps exactly this process, nothing more.
Such tools are ready to use within days, not months. They work with the programs the business already has. And they do not have to be perfect, just take care of the one step that costs time today.
Start small, then grow
The nice thing about small tools: they can grow. The interface later becomes a customer portal, the automation becomes reporting, the internal tool gradually becomes the application that carries the business. Each step is useful on its own and can be decided on its own. Nobody has to know at the start what the solution will look like in three years.
That is how I work with prices, too. Clearly defined automations cost between €390 and €1,900 net with me, at a fixed price before the start. Larger projects I plan in stages, each with its own price and its own usable result. And before any money changes hands, there is a free initial assessment: you describe the process, I tell you honestly whether a tool is worth it or whether standard software is enough.
What I am not saying
There are projects that really are projects. Replacing a legacy system with ten years of data, an application that twenty people work with every day, a process with liability attached. Those need planning, and planning may cost something. But that is the exception, not the norm. The norm is an annoying process that a small tool can put a stop to.
Nobody founds a company with twenty employees and its own IT department either. So why act that way with software? How a project runs with me, from the first sentence to support, is described under How a project runs.