The questions worth asking before you sign anything
You are probably not comparing suppliers. Almost nobody who contacts us is. They are asking where to start, which is a different question. But at some point somebody will quote you, and these are the questions that tell you most about what you are buying.
- What is the smallest version of this, and what would it cost? A supplier who cannot describe a small first engagement is selling you a project rather than solving a problem.
- Who will actually do the work? Not who is in the room now. Ask for names and ask whether they will still be on it in month three.
- What happens when it is wrong? Every system is, eventually. The answer tells you whether they have run one in production.
- What do I own at the end? The code, the decisions, the data, the ability to have somebody else change it. Ask about all four separately.
- What would make you tell me not to do this? The most useful question on the list, and the one most likely to be answered with a pause.
What a good answer sounds like
Specific, and slightly disappointing. A good answer usually makes the job sound smaller and harder than you hoped, because both of those are true.
- It names a constraint. A supplier who says what will be difficult has thought about your situation rather than their capability.
- It distinguishes the build from the rest. Anyone who has put a system into a real business knows the build is the short part.
- It asks about your data before pricing the work. The state of the data is one of the largest cost drivers, and a price quoted before anyone has looked at it is a guess.
- It includes what happens after go-live. Adoption and maintenance are not optional extras; a plan without them is a plan for a system nobody uses in six months.
The answers that should worry you
None of these means somebody is dishonest. All of them mean the conversation has not got to the real question yet.
- A price before a scope. If nobody has looked at your systems, the number is a placeholder with a decimal point.
- A demo as evidence of a timeline. Something impressive built in a week is genuinely impressive and says almost nothing about running it in your business.
- Certainty about your industry from a supplier who has not worked in it. Confidence is cheap; ask what specifically they have seen go wrong.
- An answer to “what would make you say no” that is essentially “nothing”. Everyone has a boundary. A supplier who will not name theirs has one they would rather you did not know about.
- Efficiency multipliers. If a number like ten-times or eighty-per-cent appears without a measurement behind it, ask whose measurement it is. It is usually somebody else's, about somebody else's business.
What we would say if you asked us
The same five questions, answered about us, because a page like this is worthless if it exempts its author.
- Smallest version: one process that matters to you, working properly. That is where nearly every engagement should start and it is where we are strongest.
- Who does the work: both founders, on every engagement, for its whole length. There is no bench, which is also a limit on how much work we can take.
- What you own: the code, the decisions and the data. Written down so somebody else could take it over.
- Where we would say no: large enterprise, and back-end-heavy systems work, which is a larger undertaking than the front-end work we are best at. We would tell you that at the start.
- And what we cannot show you: named client case studies. We do not have permission to name anyone yet, and we would rather say that than describe an anonymous composite.