Most of the tools you pay for were built so somebody could watch the work happen, and very few of them help anyone actually do it. That’s why the dashboard looked great for two weeks and then quietly stopped, and it’s why the answers still live in one person’s head.
“We’re paying for four things that do the same job.”
“We tried it. Too manual. Nobody stuck with it.”
“It’s all in the system and I still get asked.”
“Every quarter somebody suggests a new one.”
“The pilot demoed well and then went quiet.”
“If that person leaves, nobody knows how any of it is set up.”
Software gets sold to the person who signs, and the person who signs wants visibility. So that’s what gets built, and that’s what gets demoed. The people doing the work end up with a system that asks them to report on the work on top of doing it. They go along with it for a couple of weeks, and then the work drifts back to the spreadsheet and the group chat, and the questions find their way back to you.
That’s why the last three purchases didn’t solve it. The trouble sits in what the tools were shaped around. When you shape them around the work your people actually do, most of them get quieter and cheaper, and people start using them.
There are three ways to start, depending on how much of the work you want to carry yourself.
This is for the company that collected its tools the way everyone does. You bought them one at a time, each to solve that week’s problem, and nobody has ever laid them all out on a single page.
We look at everything you own and everything you pay for. We see who logs in and who quietly doesn’t, what each tool was bought to solve, and whether it still does. Then we tell you what to do about it, in an order that won’t break anything while it’s happening.
Nobody needs to prepare anything. We’d rather see it as it is.
Everything you own, on one page
This includes the subscriptions nobody has opened this quarter, along with what each one costs you a year.
What to switch off, and in what order
For each one, you’ll see what it frees up when it goes, both in money and in somebody’s week.
What the tools you keep should be doing
Most of what reaches your desk is already answerable by something you own and haven’t set up.
The sequence
You’ll know what to do first, second and third, so the change lands without two weeks of everything being broken.
$3,500
The fee is fixed and agreed before we start.
~1 week
It takes about an hour of your team’s time.
You keep the map, and you can act on it with anyone. Plenty of people take it and do the work in-house, and we count that as the read having worked. The expensive part was always knowing which thing to do first.
What it isn’t. The Stack Read tells you what to do. Doing it is a separate step, which you can take on yourself or with us.
This is for the company where the AI pilot didn’t ship, or where everyone keeps asking where AI fits and you’d rather answer with something better than a guess.
You get everything in a Stack Read, plus an answer to the question nobody has answered yet. Where in your week is there work repeatable enough to hand over, valuable enough to be worth the effort, and safe enough to let go of? And where would AI just be an expensive way to do the wrong thing faster?
If something already stalled, we’ll tell you which of the three usual reasons caused it: nobody owned it, nobody agreed how you’d know it had worked, or the gap between what got demoed and what production needed was never closed.
Everything in the Stack Read
You get the map, the switch-off list and the sequence.
Three workflows worth automating
Each comes with what it costs to build and what it gives back, worked out from your own numbers.
What not to automate, and why
This is usually the part your people would call the reason they’re good at their jobs, and it stays with them.
An hour with the people who did the work
You hear the findings from the people who did the research, and you can ask them anything.
$5,000
The full fee comes off anything you do with us in the next ninety days.
5 days
That’s kickoff to readout, with about two hours of your team’s time.
You keep the map, the list and the numbers. A lot of the value is that your team finally sees the same picture at the same time, which is most of what was missing the first time.
What it isn’t. The audit tells you where AI is worth it and what to tackle first. Building any of it is a separate piece of work.
This is for the company that roughly knows what it needs and doesn’t want to spend three months evaluating it. It’s also for anyone who doesn’t want to be the person configuring it at eleven at night, and the only one who understands it afterwards.
We start with an audit to settle what happens first, which means everything in a Stack Read comes with it. Then we choose the tool with you, review the setup you already have, put it in properly, move the data across where it needs to move, and stay in the room when your team is shown it.
Five weeks later we come back. That’s when the honeymoon is over and the real usage shows up, and it’s the point where most rollouts quietly revert. We’d rather be there for it.
An initial audit to identify what should happen first
The scope and the final price come out of this audit, so nobody is guessing at them up front.
Everything in the Stack Read
You get the full map, so the new tool is chosen against what you already own.
A review of the setup you already have
We work with what the product already does and configure it to fit how your team works.
Tool setup and configuration
We set it up properly once, so nobody has to work around it later.
Data migration, where it’s needed
We move only the data that earns its place in the new system, so the old clutter stays behind.
We sit in on the team walkthrough
We’re in the room while your people are shown the new system, so questions get answered on the spot.
A week-five check-in
We come back once the novelty wears off, when you can see what people actually do with it.
$6,500–12,000
This is an estimate, settled after the initial audit.
15–25 hrs
The hours depend on the product and on how complex the setup and migration turn out to be.
You keep a system your team can run on their own, without needing us. Setting it up creates channels between people almost as a side effect, and those tend to outlast the tool itself.
What it isn’t. This covers configuration and migration, and it stops short of custom development. If what you need doesn’t exist yet, we’ll tell you at the audit.
Each one builds on the one before it. If you’re not sure which you need, start with the Stack Read. It’s the cheapest way to find out whether you have a tooling problem or a different problem wearing tooling’s clothes.
