Connected tools

What gets in the way

Most product businesses already have decent tools: a Shopify shop, QuickBooks or Xero for the accounts, a courier portal, email, and spreadsheets that fill the gaps. The trouble is the gaps. An order arrives in one system, is copied into a sheet to plan it, copied again into a courier booking and copied a third time into the accounts.

Every copy is a chance for a mistake and a reason for someone to check. Replacing everything with one large system is slow, expensive and rarely fits the way the work really happens. More often it is the connections that are missing, not the tools.

Typical examples

• New Shopify orders appearing in the list your team plans from, without anyone typing them in.
• Booking a courier from an order and bringing the tracking details back to it.
• Sending sales and cost entries to QuickBooks or Xero instead of rekeying them.
• Turning a delivery change or return request that arrives by email into a record against the right order.
• Keeping a spreadsheet you rely on, but filling it from the source instead of by hand.

At a Kent mattress maker, the second phase now under way adds Shopify clearance alongside aftersales and invoice checks. It builds on a first stage that the office uses every day.

What a connection is

Joining tools up does not mean a new system sitting on top of them. A connection is a small piece of software that notices something happening in one place, such as a new order, and does the next step in another, such as adding it to the plan. Your team keeps working in the screens they already know.

A good connection also says so when it cannot do its job. A failed courier booking should show up as a flag for someone to look at, not as a customer asking where their order is.

How a first stage works

I start on site, following an order through your tools: where it is typed, where it is copied and who checks it. The first stage is usually the one connection that removes the most retyping.

You keep the tools you already use. I work with Shopify, QuickBooks or Xero, couriers, email and spreadsheets, and if a system can export its data or has an API, it can usually be joined up. If it can do neither, that is better known at the start, so it comes up in the first conversation.

Each stage has a fixed price, agreed before work starts. First stages usually cost £5,000 to £10,000 and are scoped to go live in weeks, not months. Afterwards, a monthly support fee covers fixes, small changes and someone who knows the system. I’m based in the South East and work on site across the UK.