Your software works. Your people are good. And somehow a simple answer still takes three people and half a day. That's not a discipline problem. It's the gap between two systems that were never fully joined, and the pile of workarounds your company has quietly built on top of it.
Same job. Two records. Somebody has to decide which one is true, and then go type it into the other one.
She pulls it, opens it next to the other one, and starts down the columns. Same four corrections every week. She's fast at it now, which is the part that should worry you, because it means nobody times it anymore and nobody questions it. It's just what Thursday is.
They want to know where their order stands. One screen says one thing. The other says something close but not the same. Now three people are looking into it, and an answer that should have taken five seconds is going to take until lunch. You tell them you'll call back.
Everything after a certain date is in the new one. Everything before it is still in the old one. You pay for both. Somebody floated shutting it down a year ago and the room went quiet, because nobody could promise what would break. So it stays on, like a light in a room nobody enters.
She knows which report to run, which column to delete first, and what to do when it throws the error. None of it is written down, because why would it be. Then she takes a week off, and everything takes longer, and nobody can say exactly why.
Somebody came in, looked around, and priced it properly. Five figures, six months, and a stretch in the middle where nobody was sure what happened to the data. You thanked them, closed the PDF, and went back to the way it's been working. It's still working. That's the whole problem.
Three weeks in, she wants to know why the same information gets entered in two places. Everyone gives her the same answer: that's just how it is here. She stops asking eventually. That's the moment it goes from a problem to a habit.
If it isn't broken, don't fix it. Fine. But not broken isn't the same as working well.
Nothing here has ever failed badly enough to force the issue. That's exactly why it's been this way for nine years, and why it will still be this way in nine more unless somebody looks at it on purpose.
One gap gets covered by a workaround. The workaround gets covered by a person. And then the whole thing starts charging you rent in five different places at once.
New people learn the software in days. What takes them a year is learning the workarounds, because none of it is written down anywhere. It lives in the heads of whoever's been here longest, and it walks out the door with them.
Typed twice means it can be typed wrong once. You usually don't find out at the time. You find out later, as a credit memo, a re-do, or a call you didn't want to take.
Work doesn't move until somebody carries it across. So your delivery time includes an overnight, or a Friday, or however long it takes for the right person to get to it. Nobody quotes it that way, but that's what the customer feels.
They don't leave over a slow answer. They leave after the fourth one, when they've decided you're harder to deal with than the alternative. It never shows up as a complaint. It shows up as a customer who stopped calling.
The workaround grows with volume. Twice the work is twice the hours, which means growth costs you a hire you shouldn't have needed.
Both vendors say their side works, and they're both right. The problem lives in the space between them, which means it isn't on anyone's list and never comes up in a meeting.
We'd rather you run these numbers yourself than read one we invented.
We find the exact place your information stops moving on its own, and we close that gap. Usually that means making two things you already pay for hand off to each other, or taking a manual step off somebody's desk for good.
We are not a data migration company and we don't sell you software. Those are the two ways this normally gets quoted, and they're the two reasons it usually doesn't get fixed. You keep what you have.
Occasionally the honest answer is that a system is genuinely dead. No vendor, no support, nobody left to call. Then replacing it is on the table. That's the exception, not the pitch.
Placeholders. Nothing below is a real client or a real result yet.
Industry and size, which two systems, what the workaround was, what changed, and the client's own number for hours or days back.
Industry and size, which two systems, what the workaround was, what changed, and the client's own number for hours or days back.
Industry and size, which two systems, what the workaround was, what changed, and the client's own number for hours or days back.
Pick a time and tell us about it. We mostly want to hear how the work actually gets done, because that's the only way to know whether there's anything here worth fixing.
Free, and it doesn't commit you to anything. If we look at your setup and think it's fine, or that the gap isn't worth paying anyone to close, we'll say so and that'll be the end of it.
Thirty minutes, call or video, whichever you prefer. Bring the thing that annoys you most.