Topic
Choosing and buying custom software
When building is worth it, when to stay with off-the-shelf software, when to replace a legacy system and what decides the platform of a website. Written for buyers, not for developers.
How your company gets recommended by ChatGPT and Google's AI answers
ChatGPT and Google's AI answers recommend the company that has the answer written on its own site and confirmed by third parties, in reviews, directories and lists. You can't pay your way into the answer, and an llms.txt file on its own changes nothing. On our site, appearances in Google's AI answers went from 262 to 1,482 in eight weeks and a manufacturer 900 km away reached us through ChatGPT, but contact through the site did not grow at the same pace.
19 min read
19 min read
Why your team stops using the new system and goes back to spreadsheets
A team goes back to the spreadsheet, the notebook or WhatsApp when the new system takes more work than the old way on the task it does every day, not because people resist change. Adoption is decided on the screen of the most repeated action, in what each role sees and in a rollout done alongside the team, and it is measured after launch by the work done in the system, not by logins. At Fitness Academia, the client created all 15 user accounts on its own and entered its targets through December inside the tool.
15 min read
15 min read
Already paying for off-the-shelf software: configure, integrate or build your own
If you already pay for off-the-shelf software and something is missing, you have three ways out, in this order of cost: switch on what the software already offers, integrate around it or build a module alongside it, and build your own system. In one audit we ran, three of a client's four requests already existed in the software they were paying for, switched off. Your own system pays off when the process is what your customers buy from you, and even then it can live alongside the off-the-shelf software instead of replacing it.
15 min read
15 min read
Spreadsheet, off-the-shelf ERP or custom software: the answer is almost always more than one
A spreadsheet, an off-the-shelf ERP and custom software are not competing for the same spot: they sit in different layers of the same operation, and almost every healthy company runs all three at once. The expensive mistake is not picking the wrong one, it is changing layers when you did not have to: at a five-location gym chain the off-the-shelf ERP stayed as the source of every sale, and the custom system simply started reading from it every five minutes. The spreadsheet, in turn, stops working for three objective reasons, and none of them is size.
14 min read
14 min read
What decides the platform for a company website
The platform decision for a company website in 2026 is no longer builder versus custom: it is AI generator versus professional development. We no longer recommend a site builder for any new project, and for a small site with no personal data and no search as a sales channel, an AI generator is enough. The case leaves the generator the day someone becomes accountable for performance, SEO, GEO, AEO, security and data protection.
12 min read
12 min read
When a legacy system needs replacing — and when it doesn't
Old, ugly or slow is not a reason to replace: of the nine systems that were already running when we arrived, we replaced two and still maintain five. The signs that actually decide are different ones — nobody can change the system, you lost access to your own product, the team has already built a path around it. And before any of them, an audit of what you already have: in a recent case, three of the client's four requests already existed in the current system, switched off.
26 min read
26 min read