SME Process Improvement
Most of the SMEs we meet aren’t short of software. They’re short of one system that talks to the others. A finance spreadsheet that doesn’t match the CRM. A shared inbox doing the job of a proper workflow. A homegrown Access database that one person understands and everyone else is quietly afraid of. None of this means the business is badly run. It’s what happens to a growing business when the tools it started with never get replaced.
The usual answer, sold by people who haven’t seen your business, is to rip it all out and force everything through a big platform: Salesforce, SAP, or this year’s equivalent. That fixes the symptom and creates a new problem. Your processes now bend around software built for a generic business, at a price built for a much bigger one. We take the opposite approach. We build the system around how you work, and change the process only where the current one is genuinely the problem.
A platform built to be sold to thousands of businesses is built for none of them in particular.
Is this you?
- A spreadsheet that began as one person’s system is now relied on by five people who don’t fully trust it.
- Your team types the same information into two or three places because your systems don’t talk to each other.
- You’ve had a quote for an enterprise system, and the price, or six months of disruption, put you off.
- You know where the bottleneck is, whether that’s order processing, quoting, scheduling or reporting, but nobody has had time to fix it properly.
What we do
1. Map the process as it actually runs. We talk to the people who use the current system, not only the people who commissioned it. This usually takes a few days on site.
2. Design the smallest system that solves the real problem. Sometimes that’s a bespoke web application. Sometimes it’s SharePoint and Power Automate, put together properly. Sometimes it’s an integration between systems you already own.
3. Build and roll out in phases. The business keeps running while we work, and nobody has to learn a new way of working overnight.
4. Keep the same people on support. You get the people who built it, not a ticket queue that starts from scratch every time you call.
When bespoke beats off the shelf, and when it doesn’t
| Off the shelf platform | Bespoke system | |
| Built for | A generic business, so that thousands can buy it | Your process, and nobody else’s |
| Cost shape | A licence per user, with the useful features often in the dearer tiers | One build, then support at a level you choose |
| When things change | You adapt to the software | The software adapts to you |
| Roadmap | The vendor’s | Yours |
| Choose it when | Your process is standard and isn’t how you win | Your process is how you win, it’s regulated, or nothing on the shelf fits |
Sometimes the right answer is neither. For Suffolk Orthodontics, retyped referrals were fixed by a feature their existing supplier already offered, so we built nothing. Read the Suffolk Orthodontics case study.
Proof
“I was impressed by their knowledge and expertise along with their ability to change deliverables.” Charlotte Wardle, Financial Manager, PD Tax Consultants.
PD Tax Consultants: a fast growing tax firm moved off Capsule CRM to a scalable platform, with secure backup to SharePoint. Read the case study
If your process also has to satisfy an external auditor, see regulated industry solutions. For a real project costed and timed, see our costed examples.
What’s the one process you keep working around?
Tell us what’s slowing the business down. The first conversation is free, and we’ll tell you straight if bespoke is overkill.
hello@maly.co.uk | 01473 934672 | Ipswich, Suffolk