You Get the Automation. You Keep the Risk.

TL;DR

I’m three meetings into understanding an existing customer’s workflow before building them an app. Two other companies have already quoted $50,000 and $70,000 without looking at the technology they use. That bothers me. Before somebody tells you what your solution costs, they should understand your people, your process, and what’s already there. Make them follow a real transaction, show how they handle the exceptions, and explain what you’ll still be responsible for afterward.

Wait. I’m paying for what?

Look, explain something to me. You’ve got a ten-person aviation business. Maybe five people, maybe twenty. You sell parts, you do repairs, you do both, and everybody’s already got more to do than they can get through. Then somebody tells you the answer is an $80,000 automation project connecting eleven different services.

Eleven.

A bot to read the email, another one to read the spreadsheet, something to push the information over here, something else to bring it back. And Larry and Linda still have to update the damn spreadsheet so the whole thing works. If they don’t, what happens? Does the automation stop? Does it use yesterday’s information? Does anybody even know it’s wrong before somebody acts on it?

These are the things I want to understand. Because you’re telling me how much work this is going to take off my people, and I’m looking at how much attention my people still have to give it. They’ve got to feed it, check it, make sure the last connection did what the next connection needs, and somehow do the job I hired them for in between.

I’m supposed to spend $80,000 and then remind Linda to update the file so the automation doesn’t screw something up?

Come on. We ought to be able to ask for better than that.

You haven’t even looked at what they’re using.

And everywhere you turn, here comes another company you’ve never heard of. They can fix everything. Everything that’s been wrong with your business since the day you opened, apparently they’ve got it handled. You’ve barely finished explaining what you do and they’re already telling you what you need.

That gets under my skin. You haven’t met the team. You haven’t followed an order. You don’t know what happens when the cert doesn’t match what receiving expected, or when the customer changes the requirement after purchasing has already acted on it. But somehow you know the operation better than the people who’ve been running it for years.

Some of these pitches make me wonder whether they can spell aviation. And then you’re supposed to feel old-fashioned for thinking they ought to understand it. They can connect your data. Okay, but do you understand what you’re connecting? Do you know why that person checks it before it moves? Or have you decided that’s another manual step we can get rid of?

I keep coming back to something someone on an aviation team told us:

That’s where I’d start asking questions. They’ve already bought tools. There’s still work happening between them. What is it? Why does it exist? Is somebody copying information, or checking something important, or trying to make up for something the last project never handled? Until you know, how do you know what to build?

You haven’t even looked at what they’re using. How the hell do you know what they need?

Linda’s busy. So is everybody else.

You know the person in your business who can sort this stuff out. They know which number is right, which file is current, why that part’s sitting there, and who needs to be called before anybody touches the order. Everybody goes to them. Then somebody asks why they haven’t finished their own work. That’s the person I’m thinking about when I hear a customer say this:

Because somebody has to find those errors. Imagine your salesperson changes a vendor cost after the sales order’s been created. Purchasing has the earlier number, the spreadsheet has something else, and now a bot grabs the new value and passes it along. Was that person allowed to change it? Who approved it? Where’s the original? Does the next person know they’re working from a different number?

Now Linda’s checking the email, Larry’s calling purchasing, and somebody’s walking over to sales asking what the hell happened. The customer’s still waiting. Maybe the wrong information’s already gone out. So now you’ve got to fix that too, and by the time everybody agrees on what happened, half the afternoon’s gone.

Then we tell people to be more careful. With what? Which version should they have believed? They were doing their job with what was in front of them, and the person who usually catches this stuff was busy catching something else.

I respect the hell out of people who can keep a business moving through that. But I don’t want to keep adding to their day just because they’re good at figuring it out. At some point we have to stop and ask why it takes so much figuring out in the first place.

I’m on meeting three, with somebody we already know.

This is on my mind for a reason. I just had my third meeting with an existing customer because I want to understand their workflow one hundred percent before I build an app for them. An existing customer. We’ve already got a relationship, and I’m still asking questions before I decide what I’m going to build.

That shouldn’t be remarkable. That should be what they expect from me.

Two other companies have already quoted them $50,000 and $70,000. They haven’t looked at what technologies the customer is using.

I’m sorry. How do you get there?

I’m three meetings in, trying to make sure I understand the work, and somebody else has already arrived at seventy thousand dollars without looking at what they’re working with. What are you basing that on? What do they already own? What can it do? What’s been configured, what hasn’t, and where are people working outside it because something doesn’t fit?

I’m asking because I need to know. If there’s something already there that can handle part of the job, that matters. If a spreadsheet’s carrying something the system never accounted for, that matters too. I don’t get to assume the spreadsheet is stupid because it’s a spreadsheet. Somebody put it there for a reason, and before I take it away I’d better understand what stops working without it.

A customer in a separate workflow conversation said something I think about here:

Where possible. They’re telling you they want help, but they still have to get through the work. I hear that and I want to know what those other things are. Show me the part that doesn’t fit the explanation. The exception you handle differently. The thing only one person knows how to do. Because if we skip over that and build around the nice, clean version, the same people are going to be stuck filling the gaps afterward.

I haven’t reviewed those other proposals. I don’t know what they’ve put in the scope. But I can’t get comfortable with that order of events: price the answer, then find out what the customer’s using.

And I’m not saying three meetings make me right. If I need another one, I’ll have another one. I’d much rather they get tired of my questions now than come back six weeks later saying, Ralph, we told you about that. Because if they did, and I went ahead without understanding it, that’s on me.

They’ve got to use what I build. I get to leave the call. They don’t get to leave the problem.

The customer’s calling you.

This is where I get angry about how casually the risk gets handed back. The parser works. The connection works. The automation ran. Everybody can show you that their piece did something. Meanwhile your people are staring at information that doesn’t agree, and nobody can tell them which answer to use.

I remember a prospect asking about the part they’d actually have to deal with:

Good question. Stay on that. Ask what happens when it doesn’t go the way it went in the demonstration. Who notices? Who gets told? Who fixes it? Because if the answer involves you opening three support tickets and explaining your business to three companies while each one says their part is working, somebody needs to account for that before you buy it.

You’ve got ten people. Who do they think is available to do this? The person chasing the vendor? The person in receiving? You? You’re already trying to get something out the door, and now you’ve got to figure out where the information got stuck between two companies that are both getting paid.

Your customer doesn’t care which connection broke. They bought the part from you. They’re calling you. And now you’re chasing three companies to get an answer you should already have. You can hear how that call’s going to go, and it’s your name they’re going to remember when it’s over.

Same thing when you’ve got to explain a changed record or answer an audit question. You need to know who did what, when, and why. You can’t sit there pointing to a chain of services and hope that counts as an explanation. You’re the one responsible for the business using them.

That’s why another connection isn’t some little detail to me. Someone has to maintain it, understand it well enough to notice a problem, and deal with what happens when it fails. If that someone is the customer, say so. Before they sign. Let them decide whether they’re willing to take it on, instead of discovering afterward that they’ve bought themselves another job.

We’ve got to get less polite about this.

Look, I’ll pay for work that solves a real problem. A separate tool can earn its place. An $80,000 project might be justified. But you’ve got to show me why this is the right way to do it for the people who’ll have to work with it. I shouldn’t have to apologize for wanting that explained.

Those of us selling technology into aviation should expect the questions. Me included. Working at ERP.Aero doesn’t give me a pass. If I’m asking you to trust me with part of your operation, I owe you the time to understand it. And if I don’t understand something, I need to ask before I start telling you what the answer costs.

I keep thinking about the person who’s still checking the spreadsheet at the end of the day because they don’t trust that everything made it across. They want to go home. They also know what happens tomorrow if they miss something. We should care enough about that person to stop adding things they have to check and calling it progress.

So put your foot down. Make somebody follow your transaction, with the changed price and the missing paperwork and the person who’s out that day. Ask who you call when it breaks. Keep asking until you understand the answer.

Before I give you $70,000, you’re going to sit down and understand what my people actually do. And if you think that’s asking too much, I think you just answered my question.

And while you're looking at it, ask me about .../build.

Before you leave...

Let’s actually do this. Pick one recent transaction for the checklist below that gave your team trouble. Get the person who handled it in the room. Only check a box if you can show the answer for that transaction. If you’re guessing, leave it blank.

• We’ve followed the whole job. From the first request to the point it was finished, including the emails, spreadsheets, systems, and people it passed through.
• The people doing it have had their say. They’ve shown us the exceptions and the things they do that aren’t in the tidy version of the process.
• We know what the proposed solution would use. Somebody has looked at our existing technology and explained what stays, what changes, and why we need anything else.
• We can show what happens when information changes. Who’s allowed to change a price, what needs approval, where the original stays, and how the next person finds out.
• We’ve seen it handle a problem. A changed vendor response, unavailable material, missing paperwork, or another exception from our actual work.
• We know what our people still have to do. The checking, updates, maintenance, and follow-up have been explained, along with the work that genuinely goes away.
• We know who helps when it fails. There’s a named contact and a clear responsibility for getting us working again, including when the problem sits between services.
• The price has an explanation. We understand what’s included, what costs extra, and what our team is expected to contribute to make it work.

Now look at the blanks. Pick the one you’d least want to discover after you’ve paid, and put that question in front of whoever’s asking for your business. Me included.

You don’t need another polished answer. You need them to sit down with your people and show you. And if that’s too much to ask before you sign, I think you’ve got your answer.