Understand your processes
We work through how tasks move between people and systems, where information is captured and where work gets held up. This helps separate the underlying problem from its symptoms.
Software advice & planning
Know what to build, improve or replace.
You know what needs to work better in your business. We help you turn that into a clear plan for your software.
From understanding your day-to-day processes to defining what a new system needs to do, we make the options easier to understand and the next step easier to take.
Business processes firstAdvice from software developersScoped or hourly engagements
Sound familiar?
You can see the problem. What's the right next step?
When work gets held up, it's not always obvious whether you need new software, a change to an existing system or a simpler way of doing things.
- Your team spends too much time copying information or chasing updates.
- Spreadsheets and workarounds are holding important processes together.
- Your software no longer fits the way your business works.
- You have an idea for a new system, but need to work out what to build first.
In practice / Fraterworks
Find the bottleneck. Start where it matters.
A focused software project starts with understanding the work.
At Fraterworks, preparing labels had become a time-consuming part of manufacturing. Staff were spending late nights getting labels ready for the next day's orders.
Philo investigated the manufacturing process on site and identified several opportunities for improvement. Label printing was chosen as the first problem to solve.
We then built software that connects Shopify orders to the label printers, replacing manual label preparation with a few clicks.
- Understand the work before choosing the solution
- Choose a focused first project
- Connect the plan to working software
How we can help
A plan grounded in how your business works.
We bring software development experience to the planning stage, so the recommendations can lead to practical changes.
Assess the options
We look at what you already have and where changes would help. That could mean improving an existing application, connecting systems or developing new software.
Define the next step
We turn the priorities into clear requirements and a development plan, with an estimate of the work involved. You can see what to tackle first and what can wait.
Getting started
Start with a clear question and an agreed scope.
Engagements can be scoped around a specific piece of work or provided on an hourly basis. We agree the approach and cost before starting.
Agree the focus
Tell us what is getting in the way or what you want to achieve. Together, we define the questions to answer and the work needed to answer them.
Work through the detail
We review the relevant processes with your team and look at the systems supporting them. We map the current workflow and explore practical options for improvement.
Set out the way forward
We explain the findings and recommendations in plain language, with clear priorities and a plan you can use to decide what happens next.
What you receive
Useful outputs. A practical next step.
The deliverables are agreed for your engagement. These can include process maps, written recommendations, software requirements, a development plan and an estimate.
If you want Philo to build the solution, we can scope the development from this work. The planning engagement gives you the information to decide before committing to a build.
- Process maps showing how the work fits together
- Written findings and recommendations
- Requirements for new or improved software
- A development plan with clear priorities
- An estimate of the development work involved
Start a conversation
Tell us where the work gets stuck.
Bring us a process that takes too long, software that doesn't fit, or an idea you want to work through. You don't need a technical brief to start the conversation.
We'll help you define a useful starting point and agree whether a scoped engagement or hourly advice is the right fit.
contact@philo.co.nz