The diagnostic
Three lenses, one written finding, and a scope priced against it. Proceed or not, you keep the finding.
One of the three is usually binding. The diagnostic establishes which, what it costs, and what it would take to move.
01
Process
BindingSoftware applied to undefined work encodes one person's version of the job and removes the discretion that was holding the operation together. Before anything is scoped, we establish whether the work, and the systems it runs through, are specified tightly enough to be encoded.
We ask: Could two people perform this work and produce the same result?
02
Data
ClearMost integration failures are definitional rather than technical. When a business holds more than one definition of a customer, an order or a case, no integration can reconcile the disagreement, and it surfaces later as a reporting problem. We establish whether the business holds one definition or several.
We ask: Could two systems answer the same question and return the same number?
03
Unit economics
ClearA system carries a running cost that is rarely priced at scoping: inference, infrastructure, monitoring, human review, and the maintenance that continues for as long as the system exists. We establish the volume at which the build pays for itself, and whether the business operates above that line.
We ask: What does this cost to run in year two, and at what volume does it clear it?
An illustration. Which lens binds is what the diagnostic establishes.
How it runs
Run by the engineers who would build against it, which is why it can be short. No discovery team, no second explanation.
Three phases, one finding
01
We sit with the operators who run the work rather than with the sponsors who described it. The gap between those two accounts is frequently where the constraint is.
02
We pull the numbers ourselves rather than accepting the reported ones. Where a figure cannot be reconstructed from something we can see, it does not go in the finding.
03
Written, delivered, and walked through with whoever has to act on it.
Illustrative proportions
What we need from you
What we do not need
A brief, a requirements document, or a vendor evaluation. If one exists we will read it, and say where the finding disagrees.
01
The constraint that is binding.
Stated plainly, with the evidence for it, in terms the operators who work inside it will recognise.
02
What that constraint currently costs.
Quantified against the operation as it runs today, not against a projection.
03
What can be built against it.
Sequenced by payback rather than ambition, with the work that pays first placed first.
04
The line in the P&L it moves.
Named explicitly, with the volume at which the build clears its own running cost.
Short, and written for someone who was not in the interviews. Clients take it to boards, lenders and their own technology teams. Every figure in it traces to something we saw, not something we were told.
Why it exists
We charge for the finding as a document, not as the opening phase of a build. The fee covers the work whatever it concludes, including less than you asked for, or nothing at all.
A free assessment is paid for by the build that follows it. Our fee is not credited against one, because that would bring the incentive back.
Free assessment
Paid finding
What it costs
USD 4,999
Fixed, and agreed before work starts
Not adjusted by what the work finds. The fee is the same whether the finding recommends a build, a smaller one, or none at all.
The scope that follows is priced separately, by the team that would deliver it.
A worked example
A consumer lender sent every approval through a manual queue, whatever the risk. Throughput was capped by the number of reviewers, and the review criteria lived in the reviewers rather than in a policy.
The diagnostic ran all three lenses. The binding one was process, and the test was whether the reviewers applied their criteria consistently enough to write down. They did.
The criteria were written down and encoded, and manual review was kept for the cases the policy refers to a person. Most decisions no longer wait in a queue.
The difference is what the diagnostic found.
Start Here
For companies operating above $1M in revenue with a specific commercial problem.
A 30-minute call. You describe what you are considering building. We tell you which of the three lenses we would run it through first, and whether we are the right firm for it. No fee, no deck, no follow-up sequence.