Business systems
Get your business off the spreadsheet
Replace the workbook, and the tangle of linked files around it, with software built to do the job: a real database, a front end your team will actually use, reporting that holds up, and every row of your history carried across.
How it happens
Nobody sat down and chose to run the business on a spreadsheet
It was the quickest way to solve one problem, and it worked. Then someone added a tab. Then a second file pointed at the first. A few years on it schedules the work, prices the jobs or tells you what is in stock, and everyone is quietly nervous about it.
One person understands the formulas, and they are on holiday next week.
Two people open it at once and one set of changes quietly wins.
The same number comes out differently depending on which file you ask.
There are seven versions in the folder and one of them is called final.
A day a month goes on keeping it upright, and nobody has ever costed that.
Nobody dares touch the formulas, so the workarounds keep stacking up.
None of that is a failure of the people using it. It is a spreadsheet being asked to be a system, which is a job it was never designed for.
What you get
A system, not a tidier spreadsheet
Six things come out of a migration. The last one is the reason the first five keep working after we have gone.
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A real database
The rules the spreadsheet only implied, written down and enforced. One record per thing, in one place, with a history of what changed and who changed it.
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A front end your team uses
A web or app interface built around how the work actually happens, so nobody needs a tab of instructions open beside it to get through a Tuesday.
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Reporting that holds up
The numbers the business runs on, read from one source and current. Not a pivot table someone rebuilds every month and quietly hopes about.
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Your data, carried across
Every row from the workbook migrated, reconciled and checked against the original. Your history comes with you, and you get a list of what we found on the way.
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Your team, onboarded
We bring your people onto it properly, because a system nobody uses is just a more expensive spreadsheet with worse keyboard shortcuts.
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Documentation and handover
The schema, the decisions and the runbook, written for whoever picks this up next. Including someone who is not us.
The work
Four steps, one price, and a date you can plan around
No day rates. No open-ended billing. No discovery phase that quietly bills by the week while everyone works out what the file does.
If the workbook turns out to be doing more than it looked, you hear that before the work starts, not halfway through it.
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Step 1: We read the workbook
You send us the file, or the folder of files. We go through it with the people who use it and work out what it is really doing, including the parts that were never written down.
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Step 2: We scope it and quote it
One fixed price for a defined system, agreed before any work starts. You see what is in it, what is not, and what each of those choices costs.
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Step 3: We build it and you check it
You see it early and often. Where the numbers matter, the new system runs alongside the old file for a period so you can compare the two before you trust it.
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Step 4: We switch you over
Your data goes across, your team gets onboarded, and the old workbook becomes a read-only archive instead of something anyone has to maintain.
What it costs
Every migration is scoped and quoted
Per migration
From £1,500
The price depends on the workbook and on the system that replaces it, so we look at yours before we name a number. What you get back is one figure and a scope, not a rate card.
Request a quoteWhat moves it
How much the workbook actually does
One process is a small job. Orders, stock and scheduling living in the same file is three systems wearing a trench coat.
What moves it
How much history comes with you
Consistent data migrates quickly. Twelve years of it, typed by hand by fourteen different people, takes longer to reconcile.
What moves it
What it has to talk to
A system on its own is simpler than one that has to exchange data with your accounts package every night without anyone watching.
Prices exclude any applicable sales tax.
After the handover
It is yours, and it runs without us
A system you paid for should not need a monthly fee to keep working. When we hand over, you get the code, the database, the documentation and an environment you control. If we never speak again, it carries on doing its job.
A system that quietly does its job and never comes up in a meeting again is the best possible outcome. We would rather build that than bill for the alternative.
You own it outright
Code, schema, data and documentation, in your accounts and under your control. No licence to renew, no key we hold back, nothing that stops working if you stop paying us.
Changes, if and when you want them
Want something added next year? Send it over and we will quote it, the same way as the first time. One piece of work, one price, no standing arrangement required.
A retainer, only if it earns its place
If the requests turn into a steady stream, a retainer usually works out cheaper than a run of separate quotes. That is the only reason to take one.
How the retainer works →It has to run somewhere, and that is a separate decision with its own price rather than a condition of the build. We can host it, or it can sit in your own cloud account.
See hosted servicesQuestions
The things people ask first
Can we not just tidy the spreadsheet up?
Sometimes, and we will tell you if that is the answer. A spreadsheet doing a small job neatly is fine. The problem is a spreadsheet doing a system’s job, where no amount of tidying changes the fact that anyone can overwrite anything and nothing records what happened.
How long does it take?
Weeks rather than quarters for most single-process systems. You get a date with the quote. If the workbook turns out to be doing more than it looked, you hear that before the work starts.
Our data is a mess. Is that a problem?
It is normal. Part of the migration is finding the duplicates, the impossible dates and the rows that contradict each other, then agreeing with you what the truth should be. You get a list of what we found and what we did with it.
Do we lose Excel completely?
No. Export stays, and plenty of people want the numbers in a spreadsheet to work on. That is a good use of one. What changes is that the spreadsheet stops being the place the data lives.
Does it have to be in the cloud?
No. It can run in our environment, in your own cloud account, or on your infrastructure if that is what your policy requires. We will tell you what each option costs to run before you choose.
What if we want to move it elsewhere later?
Take it. It is your code and your database, on standard technology, documented well enough for another team to pick up. Lock-in is a business model, not an engineering requirement.