A nautical chart with a route plotted in glowing dots
How to decide

Guides for the decision before the build.

The thinking that comes before a build: whether to build at all, what not to automate, how to judge a partner, and the red flags in someone else’s proposal.

Guides · 10 pages

Plot the route before you sail.

  1. A wharf-side weighbridge at night with a single container resting on it, the digital readout glowing teal and nothing else lit.
    WP 01

    Automation ROI

    Hours saved × loaded hourly cost × 52, minus the build, running cost and attention — then compare with doing nothing. The arithmetic with the working shown.

    Open
  2. A chart table with two plotted routes diverging
    WP 02

    Build vs buy framework

    Buy unless one of three conditions holds. A structured hour that gets you to a defensible answer, including the costing most people skip.

    Open
  3. Two wheelhouses, one cluttered, one clean and lit
    WP 03

    Choosing a partner

    Ask for the code, ask where it is hosted, ask what happens if they disappear. Most vendors fail at least one. Includes the questions that would make us uncomfortable.

    Open
  4. A harbour control desk with a bank of glowing screens
    WP 04

    Choosing job management software

    Features rarely decide it. What decides it is whether the software matches how you already schedule, quote and invoice, and how cleanly it talks to your accounting system.

    Open
  5. Two container cranes on a night wharf reaching toward each other, their spreaders a hand’s width apart and not touching, lit from below.
    WP 05

    Integration feasibility

    Two systems integrate when both expose the records you need, in the direction you need, at your volume, with visible failure. Six questions, published limits.

    Open
  6. A single shipping container suspended mid-air between a ship and a wharf at night, spreader locked, the gap below lit teal.
    WP 06

    Migration checklist

    Export everything and check it opens, keep the old system readable for five years, move one real job first, never migrate in BAS week. The checklist.

    Open
  7. A channel of red warning buoys with one safe marker ahead
    WP 07

    Nine red flags

    What we look for when clients ask us to sanity-check someone else’s automation proposal. No discovery, no ownership clause, no named limitations, and a suspiciously round number.

    Open
  8. A small coastal vessel moored at a container terminal at night, dwarfed by the crane above it, one container too large for its deck.
    WP 08

    Seven signs

    A spreadsheet beside the system, a plan cap running your workflow, an API on a tier you do not pay for, an incomplete export, and three more. Mostly the joins.

    Open
  9. Twenty numbered mooring bollards along a dark wharf at night, each catching a point of teal light, one rope missing from the line.
    WP 09

    Twenty questions

    Who owns the code and from when, where it is hosted, what you hold if they vanish — and seventeen more. The questions we ask on our own engagements.

    Open
  10. A brass hand-wheel valve among automated glowing pipes
    WP 10

    What not to automate

    Do not automate an unstable process, one nobody has documented, work where errors are expensive and invisible, or anything customers value because a human does it.

    Open
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