What we look at before we quote anything

Two hours with your invoices and your front desk tells us more than a discovery workshop. Here is the list we work through, in order.

We start with the card, not the wishlist

The first thing we ask for is twelve months of software charges. Not what you think you pay for. The actual statements, including the annual renewals that only appear once and are easy to forget.

That list is more honest than any conversation about requirements, because it shows what the business actually funds rather than what it intends to.

Then we watch the front desk

An hour standing behind whoever answers the phone will surface three or four jobs nobody has ever written down. Retyping intake. Checking two calendars because one is authoritative and the other is the one customers see. Copying a number from an email into a spreadsheet so somebody else can copy it out again.

None of these appear in a requirements document because nobody thinks of them as work. They are just what the day involves.

We map where the customer exists

For each tool on the list we ask one question: does this hold a version of the customer? Every yes is a place the record can drift out of agreement with the others.

Three or more and the case for building is usually already made. One or two and you probably want integration, not a system.

We separate the per-seat line

Per-seat tools get totalled separately, because that figure is the one that grows when you hire. A business with a flat software bill and a business with a per-seat one have completely different decisions in front of them, even at the same monthly total today.

We ask what breaks when someone is away

Any process that only works because a specific person knows something is a process the software should be holding. Holiday cover is a good diagnostic: whatever gets worse in that week is where the system is missing.

What comes back

A short document: what we would replace first, what we would connect to rather than rebuild, what we would leave alone, and the fixed price for the first phase. If the honest answer is that you should keep your subscriptions, that is what it says.