The gaps, in full.

An integration between two systems

One side has an API. The other has none, or the vendor wants six figures for the official connector. The records still need to move, on a schedule, without a person in the middle.

• Records re-keyed between two tools
• Nightly CSV exports and imports
• A connector quoted above what building it costs

A tool that doesn't exist as a product

The process is specific enough that nothing off the shelf fits. Buying the nearest thing means changing how you work to match the software, which is the wrong direction.

• Five tools compared, all about 80% right
• The real workflow living in email and habit
• "We do it in Excel because nothing does this"

A spreadsheet that became infrastructure

It holds the real process, the real list, and most of the institutional knowledge. It is also single-user, unversioned, and one careless sort away from a very bad day.

• One person maintains the master file
• Copies named final_v3_final
• No history of who changed what

The manual handoff in the middle

A person copies from one system into another because automating it was never assigned to anyone. It is now a daily job that produces errors nobody notices until later.

• A step in the process only a human can do
• Saved templates for the copy-paste
• Mistakes that surface days after they happen

Reporting that takes a week

The numbers exist, scattered across four systems. Producing one view of them takes days of exports at month end, and two of the numbers usually disagree.

• Month-end export rituals
• A spreadsheet that stitches the exports together
• Conflicting totals between reports

A vendor API with no usable client

You are paying for access to an API with thin documentation and no library. The authentication was designed for a partner, not for you.

• Credentials nobody can get working
• Rate limits discovered in production
• Retry logic written by hand, badly

Extending software you can't replace

The ERP, the line-of-business system, the thing nobody is allowed to touch is staying. The missing piece can still be built alongside it, reading what it exposes.

• A system that cannot be modified
• Needs that will never reach the vendor roadmap
• A database you can read but not change

An AI feature that does one thing

Not a chatbot bolted onto a page. One specific task — extracting, classifying, drafting, summarising — measured against what a person does today, with the failure cases understood.

• One clear input and one clear output
• A person doing the same reading repeatedly
• A tolerance for being occasionally wrong

A prototype before you commit

Something real enough to put in front of a client, a board, or a budget holder, and cheap enough to throw away if the answer is no.

• A pitch or demo with a date on it
• A decision waiting on something visible
• A spec that is easier to argue about when it runs