Home › How we work
None of these came out of a textbook. Each one comes from a problem we actually hit and then closed. For each you get where it comes from and what it changes for you: if a rule changes nothing for the people working with us, it isn't a rule, it's a sentence.
Where it comes from. When a company calls us, the problem they name is nearly always the consequence of another one. ‘Invoicing is slow’ means the data arrives bent from three steps earlier. Fix the invoicing and you have spent money, and the problem is back next month.
What it changes for youBefore the quote, we come and watch how you work. Then we tell you what we understood, including the parts that are none of our business. If the problem isn't the software, we say so anyway.
Where it comes from. Every extra feature is something somebody has to learn, remember, and get mended when it breaks. We have handed over systems full of features and then watched the same five screens get opened, day after day.
What it changes for youWe offer you less than we could sell you. If you won't genuinely use something, we don't build it — and it doesn't go on the quote.
Where it comes from. Inside a system that is switched on there are people working at that very moment. One rushed change can stop a whole office for half a day, and the rush is nearly always the developer's, not theirs.
What it changes for youEvery change is tried on a copy first. Anything that deletes data only runs once a person has said go. Nobody puts their hands in your records ‘while they're in there anyway’.
Where it comes from. Companies don't get stuck with a supplier because of a contract. They get stuck because their data won't come out of that program, or because nobody understands how it works any more.
What it changes for youThe data is yours and you take it away when you like, in formats another program can read. There is no exit penalty and no minimum term. If you prefer, the system runs on a server of your own. How that works in practice.
Where it comes from. Six months later the code is still there, but the reason it was written that way has gone. Then somebody ‘improves’ it and breaks something that mattered to somebody else.
What it changes for youWhen you ask ‘why does it work like this?’, the answer exists, it is written down and it carries a date. Years later, and even if the person who built it has moved on. The tools that let us do that — Aura and Atlas — we built for ourselves: they have been running on our own working days for years, before they ever ran on your projects.
Success is when somebody who knows nothing about databases opens a screen, reads a number and says: ‘Right, that's correct.’Our definition of success
We have already turned down paid work. We would do it again.
A system built to get round the rules damages the market we work in as well. Before it is a matter of principle, it is a matter of self-interest.
Forty-five minutes, no commitment. We listen to how you work, we ask questions and we tell you what we saw. If there is nothing to build, we say that too.