Moravio
Tools that no longer keep up

The company grew. The tools stopped keeping up.

We build a more reliable base one record at a time, and we say what can stay in Excel.

Spreadsheets · Order records · Approvals · Status · Handovers

The tools that carried the company at half its current size start producing errors now, and two or three people hold the operation together. We look at what the company actually runs on today, and we move one record at a time.

Discuss your situation

What used to be a workaround is now how the company runs.

Growth shows up as errors, as questions nobody can answer quickly, and as a few people who can never be away at the same time.

  • One person knows how the spreadsheet works.

    She built the columns, and she knows which of them are rules and which are leftovers. When she is away, everyone else works from guesses.

  • The status of an order is a phone call.

    Sales asks production, production asks the warehouse. Each of them holds a part of the answer and nobody holds all of it.

  • The customer finds the error first.

    A quantity that changed in one place, an old price, a date nobody passed on. It comes back as a complaint, and someone spends the afternoon reconstructing what happened.

  • Approvals live in e-mail threads.

    The decision was made and it sits in somebody's mailbox. Months later nobody can say who approved the exception and on what terms.

The risk sits with people, and it shows up at the customer.

A company that grew past its tools carries two costs at once. The first one is reliability, because every manual step is a place where a wrong quantity, an old price or a change nobody passed on can go through unnoticed, and the customer is often the one who finds it. The second one is dependency, because the rules that hold the operation together live with a few experienced people, and the work slows down to their availability. Management sees the real state of the orders late, and the office becomes the place where growth stops.

  1. 01Enquiry
  2. 02Price
  3. 03Order record
  4. 04Approval
  5. 05Production
  6. 06Status
  7. 07Invoice

The steps drawn in red are the ones that depend on a specific person. Mark yours, and you have the list of what stops when that person is away.

Some of this can stay exactly as it is.

A spreadsheet that works is worth keeping, and a standard product covers the records that look the same in every company. We show you what already exists before we propose anything custom.

  • Keep the spreadsheet where it works

    A sheet used by one person for one job is fast and cheap, and replacing it buys nothing. We say which of your sheets are in that group and leave them alone.

    Fits whenone person owns the sheet, the work in it is a calculation, and nobody else needs the numbers while it is open

  • A standard product for the standard records

    Products exist for these, and they can be configured and connected to the tools you keep. We check that route first and tell you what it covers and where it stops.

    Fits whenyour contacts, your invoices and your simple order records look the same as in any other company

  • Rebuild the tool that holds your rules

    The rules in an internal tool are years of decisions. The successor can be built beside it while the old one keeps running, and nothing is switched over before it is ready.

    Fits whenthe logic inside the old tool is still right and the technology under it is what fails

  • Build the operational core, one record at a time

    Orders, jobs or approvals move into one place with their history and their current status. It starts with one record and grows from there.

    Fits whenyour rules and your exceptions have no product behind them

  • Wait

    Building around a rule nobody has decided on creates work and no result. If that is where you are, we will say so and tell you what has to be settled first.

    Fits whennobody owns the record yet, or the way of working is about to change anyway

We read the operation as it runs today.

If your business were simple, standard software would already fit. Your operation has rules that never made it into a manual, and we learn them from the people who apply them every day.

  • We learn the work first

    We sit with the people who keep the sheets, send the approvals and chase the status, and we write down the rules they apply, including the exceptions. That part decides what the system has to do.

  • One record, written down

    We agree which record moves first, what it holds, who may change it and what stays where it is. The scope and the estimate are written before anything is built.

  • In front of real users early

    The first version goes to the people who do the job, with their real orders. We change it with them while it is still small.

  • Nothing retires too early

    The old sheet or the old tool keeps running until the new part has earned trust in daily work. We stay responsible for the result after that.

Companies whose tools stopped carrying the volume.

Staffing agency, SlovakiaAn internal system that could no longer carry the volumeP. J. Servis places part-time workers and receives data on thousands of jobs every month. Their own older internal system had stopped being enough for that volume and for the complexity of the work. We mapped the internal rules with them and built the new system around what we found.Time saved from the first day the new system was usedRead the caseIndustrial software company, EUA thirty-year-old system rebuilt while it kept runningThe product that keeps factory equipment serviced had run for almost thirty years, and the understanding of how it all fitted together lived with the people who had been there longest. We documented the old system first, then built the successor beside it, and the old product stayed in production the whole time.Three weeks from agreed architecture to the first working versionRead the caseAuction portal, under NDAA portal that grew feature by feature until it stalledFunctions had been added as the portal grew, and the client could no longer continue with the original development team. A short analysis of the technical state came first, then the individual steps in the order they had to happen, and then we took over the development and cleared the critical parts before anything new was added.A few weeks of analysis before any rebuilding startedRead the case

The same sentence opens all three. A tool that fitted the company at its old size stopped fitting at the new one, and the work moved to whoever knew how to hold it together.

The questions we will ask in the first meeting.

  • Which spreadsheet would stop the company if it broke tomorrow, and who maintains it?
  • When something changes after an order is confirmed, who has to know, and how do they find out today?
  • Which of your rules for prices, priorities and exceptions is written down, and which one lives with one person?
  • What was the last error a customer found before you did, and where in the flow did it start?

A software partner for a company that outgrew its tools

  • Build or buy advice

    We check first whether a product or the systems you already run can carry the record. Custom development starts where your rules and your exceptions have nothing behind them.

  • Built around what you keep

    The ERP, the accounting and the sheets that do their job stay in place. What we add reads from them and writes back to them.

  • Nothing switches off too early

    The old tool runs until the new part has earned trust with real orders. The move happens one record at a time.

  • Yours to own

    The code, the data and the rules stay with your team, and the system can run on your infrastructure.

Two people from the Moravio team

One record, followed all the way through.

We take the record that carries the most work today, an order, a job or an approval, and we follow it from where it starts to where it ends. You need nothing prepared and no specification. You talk to the people who design and build the system, so nothing is lost on the way to a delivery team.

  1. What the company runs on

    We list the sheets, the mailboxes and the old tools that carry real work, and we write down who keeps each one.

  2. What breaks at volume

    We mark what stops working when the volume doubles, when two orders change on the same day, or when one person is away.

  3. Which columns are rules

    We read the main sheet with the person who owns it, and we separate the business rules from the leftovers of the last few years.

  4. What moves first

    We name the one record to move, and we say plainly which parts stay in Excel and why.

What you bring

One spreadsheet as it really is and one order that went wrong. Nothing prepared, no specification.

What you leave with

The list of what breaks at higher volume, the record that moves first, what stays in Excel, and a scope and estimate for that first step.

Frequently asked questions

Will you understand our specific business?
That is the first part of the work. We sit with the people who do the job and write down the decisions, the data and the exceptions before anything is designed. We have done it for a staffing agency, for an industrial software product and for an auction portal, and the operation was different every time.
Will we have to replace everything?
No. The sheets that work, the accounting and the tools that do their job stay where they are. We move one record at a time, and a replacement only comes up where a tool forces a way of working the company has outgrown.
How do we make sure our people will use it?
The first version goes in front of the people who do the job, with their real orders, while it is still small. We change it with them. The old sheet keeps running until the new part has earned trust in daily work.
How do I defend it to management and IT?
You leave the first step with a written scope, an estimate, the options we rejected and the reason, and the risks. IT gets the technical picture in their own terms: permissions, what connects to what, and who owns the code.
Can we keep working in Excel?
Yes, for the parts where it earns its place, and we tell you which parts those are. A sheet one person uses for one calculation can stay. A sheet several people edit while orders depend on it is usually the one to move first.
What happens to the data we have in spreadsheets today?
It comes across with the record that moves. We agree which history is worth bringing over, we check it with the person who keeps the sheet, and the original file stays readable while the new part is in use.
Our old internal tool still works. Does it have to go?
No. If the rules inside it are still right and the technology under it is what fails, the successor can be built beside it while it keeps running. That is how the thirty-year-old maintenance system in the case above was replaced, and the old product served every plant throughout.

What do you need but you can’t buy off the shelf?

Send us the messy version. We will help make the next decision clear.

Describe the situation

Prefer e-mail? jakub.bily@moravio.com · Or book a call