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How to map a process nobody has ever written down
Most of the processes that matter in a business have never been documented. They were figured out by people doing the work, refined over years, and they live in habit. Then someone decides to build software around one, and discovers there is nothing to build from. This is a normal starting point, not a sign of a badly run business. Here is how we get from nothing to something you can build on. Do
How we stop an AI agent from making it up
The first question anyone sensible asks about an AI agent is what stops it doing something stupid. It is the right question, and "we wrote a careful prompt" is not an answer. Instructions are a request, not a constraint. If the only thing standing between a model and a bad outcome is text asking it to behave, you have a suggestion where you need a wall. Here is what we actually build instead. Ever
The hidden cost of the spreadsheet nobody will give up
Nearly every business we work with has one. A spreadsheet that runs something important, built by somebody good, and quietly load-bearing. It might price the jobs, or forecast the month, or track the compliance dates. It has been through eleven versions, half the columns are hidden, and there is one tab everybody has learned not to touch. When we suggest replacing it, the room gets defensive, and
You own everything we build. Here's why we put it in writing.
Ask a software partner who owns the code and you should get a one-sentence answer. If it takes a paragraph, read the contract properly. Our answer: everything we build for you is yours. The code, the repository, the data, the intellectual property. That holds whether we work together for one year or five, and it is written down rather than implied. The arrangements that catch businesses out are ra
How to tell whether you have a data problem or a process problem
Most businesses that call us describe the same symptom. We cannot see what is going on. What they need next depends entirely on which of two different problems is causing it, and the two need opposite treatments. A data problem means the information exists but you cannot get at it, or you cannot trust it when you do. A process problem means the information was never captured properly in the first
What we look for in the first two hours of a workshop
A Rapid Insight Workshop is one session. By the end of it we need to understand a business well enough to say what to fix first and what it is worth. That only works because we are looking for specific things, and most of them are not on the agenda. Here is what we are actually doing in the first couple of hours. Every business has two versions of how work happens. The official one is in the induc
Why we price a partnership at 1% of revenue
Most agencies will not tell you how they price. We will, because the way we price is the clearest statement we can make about how we intend to work with you. An Apex partnership is priced at roughly 1% of your revenue per year, with a minimum of $15,000 a month. Here is the reasoning, including the parts that are uncomfortable. The standard model is time. You buy hours or days, and we invoice for
The product doesn't end at the hardware: why UX is part of what you ship
CERES TAG's CERES GEN6 livestock monitor has won a 2026 Australian Good Design Award in the Product category. Congratulations to the CERES TAG team and to Clandestine Design Group, who designed the tag with them. We did not design the tag. We designed and built the web version of the new CERES Portal, including the experience a farmer goes through to register it. That distinction is the point of t