Our three stage process
Define, Develop and Deploy are phases of every project we undertake. Our highly structured process enables us to provide the most efficient solutions, whilst also maintaining clarity with each client.
Every business is different, so we do not run fixed-length engagements. This page sets out what happens at each stage; the timings and the scope are agreed with you before any work begins.
Define
A free audit into how your business works, where you are losing time, and what is limiting growth.
We start by sitting down with the people who run the business and mapping how the work actually moves through it: which tasks take the hours, how often they are repeated, who picks them up when something goes wrong, and where that is quietly holding growth back.
Only once we have a clear view of your business and its challenges do we start designing a solution. What you get back is a written audit of where intelligence would genuinely pay, where it would not, and what each opportunity would take to build. It is yours to keep either way.
What it covers
- How the work actually moves through your business
- Where the hours are lost, and what that is costing
- Which opportunities would pay, and what each would take
Why us? Most firms arrive with a product to sell and work backwards from it. We arrive with questions. The audit is free, it is yours to keep, and it includes the parts that say a system is not worth building.
Develop
A working system, tested against real conditions
We design and build the agents and automations around the way the business already works, rather than asking the business to reorganise itself around a tool. Which models and which hosting we use is written down and explained to you before anything is built, in language that does not require you to take it on faith.
Then we test against real conditions, not the tidy examples we picked ourselves: the awkward cases, the malformed inputs, the month-end volumes.
What it covers
- The awkward cases, not the ones we chose
- Malformed inputs and month-end volumes
- The point at which a person has to approve the output
The limit. We will not put a system live that only works on the cases we chose. Where a person needs to approve the output, a person approves the output, and the system tells you when it could not do the job.
Deploy
A system in live use, hosted and maintained
The system goes into live use and we stay with it: hosting, monitoring, upgrades and management. Models change, suppliers change their interfaces and the business changes what it needs. The arrangement covers keeping the system working through all three.
The ongoing cost is agreed in writing before anything goes live, so going live is never the moment you find out what it costs to keep.
What it covers
- Hosting and monitoring, on our side
- Upgrades when a model or an interface changes
- A monthly cost agreed in writing beforehand
The limit. Going live is not the end of our involvement, and support is not a separate purchase. Equally, we will not take on the running of a system we cannot monitor.
Not a stage
There is no fourth stage
Running the system is part of Deploy. It does not get its own name, its own page or its own invoice line, because a system nobody is looking after stops working sooner or later and we would rather not sell you one.
Any of the three stages can also be the end. If Define finds nothing worth building, that is a finished engagement with a useful answer in it, and we will say so in writing.
The first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Tell us which work is eating the week. We will tell you whether a system should be doing it.
AI strategy, systems and support for UK businesses.