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Knowledge and process

Applications and data

Customer and web

Browse by symptom instead

Twelve problems described the way clients describe them, with the causes behind each.

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The structure

Continuous ownership

Before you commit

Start with one problem

One process, or one focused conversation. You don't need a scope, a platform or a budget to get in touch.

Ways to start
How we workWays to startHow we deliver

Priority sectors

Also

Or by situation

Not sure you fit?

Established and growing businesses with complex operations, systems, teams or customer journeys. No rigid size limit.

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Reading

Most read

Proof

Nobody owns the application layer

MSPs own infrastructure. Vendors own their product. The space between has no name and no owner.

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AliveCommerce  /  Capabilities  /  Take software off my plate

Take software off my plate

Nobody owns your application layer. Your MSP handles the network, each vendor handles their own product, and everything in between lands on whoever has the least capacity to refuse it. Usually an operations lead who never asked to be an administrator.

Does this sound like you?

Tick what applies. The count changes what we'd recommend, and sometimes the recommendation is to do nothing yet.

What's actually causing it.

Almost never carelessness. Usually the predictable result of a decision that made sense at the time.

01

The category doesn't have a name

People know to hire an MSP for infrastructure. There's no equivalent obvious answer for applications, so it defaults to whoever is closest.

02

Each system arrived separately

Different departments, different years, different vendors. Nobody was ever given the whole picture, so nobody could be accountable for it.

03

Support means the vendor's support

Which covers their product, working as designed, in isolation. It doesn't cover whether your stack makes sense together, or whether you're paying twice for the same capability.

What we do about it.

In this order, because doing them out of order is how these projects fail.

Start with a stack review

What you run, what it costs, where it overlaps, what's exposed. Usually the first time anyone has seen it on one page. We make nothing from the overlaps we find.

Take administration off internal people

Configuration, users, updates, vendor liaison and the daily requests. The operations lead gets their week back, which is generally the whole point.

Rationalise before adding

Most stacks contain duplication nobody has audited. Removing spend is a faster return than any new tool, and it's the first thing we look for.

Keep improving it

Ownership isn't just keeping things running. Under Foundation we actively look for what's worth automating next, rather than waiting for you to ask.

Stack review
90 minutes
No charge, no obligation
Engagement
Fixed monthly
No tickets cap, no per-seat charge
Most common trigger
Someone left
The person who quietly ran it all

Which way in.

Same team either way. The difference is whether this has an ending.

Continuous ownership

Champion1

Three tiers depending on depth. Flex for credit blocks, Manage for unlimited support and administration, Foundation when you want active engineering too.

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A defined project

AliveCommerce

When there's a specific piece of work first — a migration, a consolidation, an integration — before any ongoing arrangement makes sense.

What we build

What it looks like in practice.

Manufacturing · 140 staff · ongoing

Eleven systems, no owner

The stack review found two platforms doing the same job and a licence count that hadn't been audited in four years. That paid for the first year.

2
redundant platforms retired

Straight answers.

Related.

These tend to travel together.

Replace a legacy system“It still works. Nobody left knows how.”Connect systems that don't talk“An export, an import, and a spreadsheet in between.”Reduce manual work“The same data gets typed into three systems.”

Tell us what's breaking.

We'll tell you which part of this we'd put on it, roughly what it costs, and whether it's worth doing at all — including when the honest answer is that you don't need us.

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