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.
5 pages in this section
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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