Melbourne · Since 1996
For thirty years, we've solved problems our clients couldn't get solved anywhere else. If yours is one that others couldn't crack — or you couldn't follow how they'd crack it — you're in the right place.
Before anything else
Can we solve your problem?
Find out early whether we solve the kind of problems you have. Eight questions, about a minute. If we're not your cup of tea, it'll say so.
Your answers, plotted. Each leg is one answer. The further it travels, the more that answer moved you. Fit: whether the problem needs working out before anything's built. Readiness: sponsor, time, and appetite for a straight conversation.
How we work
We work by asking four questions, in this order.
What's the real problem?
What really needs to be solved, and why does it matter? What happens if you do it, and if you don't? Are we managing risk, going for growth, or trying to leapfrog?
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We start by checking that the problem you've stated is the one worth solving. First principles, applied to the brief itself.
Often the first problem you bring us is the one on the surface, because you want to see how we handle it before you trust us with the real one. That's reasonable. How well we solve the first problem is what earns the second conversation.
It's like a visit to the doctor. You come in about your foot, and only once that's been handled well do you mention the thing you really came about.
What do the stakeholders get?
Internal teams, management, your customers, your suppliers: anyone the change touches. What's in it for them? People won't change without a really good reason.
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It's critical to understand where each group stands, and why they'd want the change, before you begin. Change is hard enough without finding out halfway through how people will react.
At a human level, everyone wants change to be worthwhile. So for every group we want to know what changes for them, why it matters to them, and whether it's good for them. Why would they care? Do they gain an advantage?
What's the blueprint?
For those two answers to be true, what has to be built, and what has to be connected? The goal is capabilities that you and your team understand, and can place priorities against. It's written in your language, so you can look at it and say: I want that.
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It's made up of what you have now and what needs to be, because a solution is often a blend of what you have and what you don't. It's rarely a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
How do we build it?
The blueprint says what must be constructed and how you'll know it's right. The stakeholder definitions say how those features come to be true. The builder may be us, you, or a team you choose.
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There are some great technologies — for example Creatio — where you can bring those to visual life very, very quickly, leveraging AI to give a fast time to market. But you'll pick the tool that's right for you.
Picking it means weighing cost of ownership, risk and time to market. There's cost to build, cost to maintain, and technical debt. Can you get technical sign-off? Does it pass cybersecurity? Does it pass ISO 27001? If you want to use AI and you don't have a governance model, you can't use that solution.
You may want to build it from scratch, but if building all the governance models would cost more than you have funds for, it'll never be signed off. Then you need something with a framework in place that you can extend. Certification and sign-off isn't only time to market. There's a cost, and an uncertainty of cost, which is considerable.
On one rollout, the fastest route to a hundred sites wasn't the best build — it was hosting under the partner who was already approved. Ten a week instead of one a month.
Why the iceberg
What you can see is the easy part.
Configuring out of the box. The features you can touch in a demo. It's where most projects start.
The low-hanging fruit is the easy bit. It's the stuff below the water that sinks you: the availability of your data, the alignment of your staff, and the effort to get that happening. Often it's a conversation nobody has had.
That's where we live. Go under the line and have a look.
2 of 7 on the agenda. Drag the line to go under.
Platform and screens
Which product, which modules, which fields.
The obvious automations
The steps a demo can show you being removed.
The data you can actually get
Whether it exists, whether you can reach it, whether it's usable, and whether it supports the process you want next.
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Can you get access to all of the data? Is it actually available? Can you import it and integrate it? And does it support the processes you want in future?
On one recent project, that question was very nearly a deal breaker.
Whether the people agree
Not whether they said yes. Whether they really understand what the change means, so they can give you the real feedback you need to make the right decisions.
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Do you actually have staff consensus on what the new versions of the processes will be? Are they genuinely on board?
The right automations, for the right reasons
Thoughtful automation design that delivers real, tangible change the organisation is ready for.
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Which processes would reduce FTE cost? What's the role of integration? Is the tool designed to streamline human interactions, and so take the cost out per transaction?
Organisational change, from policy to people
Not every technology change is ready to be supported by policy, procedure, or even job roles. They have to be aligned with the organisation's capacity to change for the technology to succeed.
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You can build an automation the organisation doesn't have the policy to apply. Or the people aren't ready to see a step go, because they've held ownership of it for years and their standing comes from it.
Removing a step is an organisational change, and it has to be allowed before the automation can work.
One client created a product they had no idea how to deliver operationally, and hadn't thought through the ramifications of the promises made. We had to explain those ramifications to them, and then how to deliver all of it.
The person it was all for
Does everyone affected, in every hat they wear, understand how their experience will change — and is it what they need, and can use?
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Could you safely give the proposal to the people who are going to be using it and say: this is why I'm investing money, and this is how it's going to change for you?
Does it say those things, in a language your company and your team can consume, without anyone having to be a technology rocket scientist? Because it is a business outcome.
Why we can go deep
The deeper you go, the harder the task.
What sits under the waterline is harder, and it can only be handled by people who've done it before. Divers know this: what happens at depth isn't learned from a manual.
It comes from years of practical experience: knowing you can dive deep, stay down long, and do it well. That's what thirty years buys you.
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Advanced divers are tested at depth. At 100 feet you're handed a child's shape-sorting puzzle, to show you can still think clearly. In one group, 30% of the divers couldn't do it. The depth got into their heads.
Depth asks three things of you. Can you manage the pressure? Can you navigate when it's darker, and keep a sense of where you are, where you went down, and where the boat is? And do you have the discipline to come back up in stages, rather than straight to the surface?
The things below the water aren't hard because they're particularly difficult subjects. They're hard if you don't have the experience to deal with them. Once you've done it long enough, you know the 87 ways you can go about it, and it'll be one of those. That's what lets you go deep without fear.
Start here
Bring us the problem.
You'll likely arrive knowing what the problem is. The first conversation makes it sharper. Bring the brief, and the shortlist if you have one.
Let's solve the problem.