Software built for an imagined buyer fits nobody.
The alternative is to build it inside real organizations, with people who will tell us when it is wrong while it is still cheap to change.
We need the friction
The interesting problems only appear in a real week: the exception nobody documented, the approval that goes through a person rather than a system, the report someone quietly rebuilds by hand.
You need it to fit
A product shaped around your actual workflow is worth more to you than a mature one shaped around someone else’s. Being early is how you get that.
Both of us need honesty
A partner who says the polite thing is worse than no partner. The arrangement only works if you are willing to tell us something is not good enough.
Access, influence and terms — the three things that make early worth it.
These are commitments, not benefits of a programme. They are in the agreement.
Three things, and all three cost you time rather than money.
This is the part worth reading twice, because a partner who cannot give these will not get value from the arrangement.
A real workflow, not a pilot
Something the business genuinely depends on, used by the people who do the work. A sandbox tells us nothing that a demo would not.
An hour a fortnight, from one owner
A named person on your side with the authority to make calls. Not a committee, and not someone forwarding messages to whoever knows.
Frank reactions, quickly
When something is wrong, we would rather hear it in a message on the day than in a summary at the quarter. Early and blunt is the whole point.
Four phases, and the exit is defined before the first one.
A partnership with no ending is just a dependency with better branding.
- Phase 01 · Fit One honest conversation We look at the workflow you have in mind and say whether it is a good fit. Roughly half of these end here, and we would rather they ended here than three months in.
- Phase 02 · Shape Set up around your work We configure the standards, harnesses and checks against how one job is genuinely done in your organization — usually the one that is expensive to get wrong.
- Phase 03 · Run Use it for real, fortnightly review Your people use it in the actual week. We meet every two weeks to go through what broke, what was awkward, and what you would change — and you see the result of that in the build.
- Phase 04 · Decide Continue, or keep what you built At the end of the term you either carry on at partner terms or stop. If you stop, the configuration and standards you built stay yours — you do not hand back the thinking.
Being early is a cost. It is worth paying only under certain conditions.
Said plainly, because the wrong partner wastes a year of both our time.
- You have a workflow that matters and an owner willing to sit with it.
- You would rather influence a tool than wait for one that nearly fits.
- You are comfortable saying “this is not good enough” to someone building it.
- You want the terms to reflect that you took the risk first.
- You need something finished, supported and unchanging from day one.
- The evaluation has to run through procurement before anyone can use it.
- Nobody internally has an hour a fortnight to give it.
- You want the discount without the involvement — that is a purchase, and we would rather sell you one later.