Replace your tools one by one, without starting from scratch

A small service business often ends up stacking subscriptions: e-mail, calendar, documents, project management, invoicing, accounting, CRM. Each tool was chosen one day, for a specific need. A few years later, each one has its own subscription, its own logins and its own copy of the same clients.

Connecting these tools to a central brain solves part of the problem. A central brain is a single place linked to all your tools, which knows what they know and answers you with its sources. You finally see your whole business in one place. One question remains: should you keep all these subscriptions?

Stacked subscriptions or custom software

Software sold on subscription is designed for a great many companies at once. It covers a lot of cases, and you are the one who has to adapt to it. Custom business software does the opposite: we build it around the way you work, with your steps, your vocabulary and your documents.

This brick built for you can track your projects, produce your invoices, keep your client records or meet a need specific to your trade. It is linked to the central brain from day one, and its data is hosted in the European Union. It does not replace everything. It replaces one specific tool, when that is worth it.

When replacing a tool is worth it

The subscription is only part of what a tool costs. A poorly fitting tool also costs time: re-typing, workarounds, information lost between two tools. To decide, look at both. Three signs should make you think, and just one is enough to raise the question:

• You pay for a tool your team only uses a small part of.
• It does not fit the way you work. Your team works around it with spreadsheets on the side, notes or copy-and-paste.
• It does not talk to the rest. The same information is entered twice, in this tool and in another.

Fictional example: a six-person consultancy pays for a very complete project management tool. The team only uses it for three things: tasks, deadlines and time spent per client. At the end of each month, someone copies that time into a spreadsheet to prepare the invoices. A custom brick that does those three things, linked to invoicing and to the central brain, replaces the tool and removes the re-typing.

When it is better to keep the tool

Replacing is not a goal in itself. Some tools almost always stay in place, linked to the central brain without being replaced:

• E-mail, such as Gmail or Outlook. That is where your clients write to you, your team knows it, and it works.
• The bank. It holds your money, and it is regulated by law.
• Accounting, such as Pennylane. It meets legal obligations, and your accountant often has access to it.

So the right question is not whether to replace everything. It is which tool costs you the most for what it gives you.

A replacement that does not let you cancel the old subscription just adds one more tool.

How a replacement works

When a replacement is worth it, we always carry it out in the same order:

• We take over the history, with everything the old tool lets you export.
• We reproduce your settings: your steps, your fields and your vocabulary.
• We show you a preview with your own data, before anything switches over.
• You approve. Nothing changes in the way you work without your agreement.
• You cancel the old subscription when you are ready, not before.

During the transition, the old tool stays in place. Your team can compare and check that nothing is missing. By the time you cancel, the new brick has already proved itself in your company.

After the replacement, everything stays linked to the central brain: a question about a client draws on their e-mails, their projects and their invoices, wherever these are. The data stays hosted in the European Union. And you own it: the data processing agreement we will sign with you will set this out.

Before replacing anything, you need to know what you have. The online diagnostic takes about four minutes and maps your tools in a personalized report.