TEAM ENABLEMENT — TOOL SELECTION
Owners pay for software that overlaps tools they already have.
You are probably already paying for something that would do the job, if anybody had configured it. Software gets bought from demos, and a demo is built to hide what will annoy you in month three. We take no commission or referral fee from any vendor, which is the thing that makes the answer worth having.
Free · 20 minutes · no commitment
WHO THIS IS FOR
Anyone holding three quotes with no way to tell which one is theatre.
THE PROBLEM
The advice available is mostly compromised. Consultants take referral fees, review sites rank by commission, and the vendor’s own answer is always yes. So the decision gets made on a demo and a feeling, and the cost of getting it wrong is not the licence — it is two years of your team working around something that nearly fits.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
Tool selection · Recommendation
EXAMPLE DOCUMENTDock appointment booking
FROM YOUR SOFTWARE BILL AND TWO VENDOR QUOTES · WRITTEN 29 SEPTEMBER
The job to be done
Carriers book their own dock times without phoning the office, and the floor sees the whole day by 6:00 am.
- Today
- About 30 bookings a day, by phone and email
- Weighed
- Two vendor quotes, and what you already pay for
- Asked by
- The operations manager
What you already pay for
Warehouse system
Used all day by the floor and the office
$21,600 a year
KeepEmail and calendar plan
Includes booking pages, never set up. They do this job.
$5,400 a year
Does the jobYard check-in app
One login, last used in June
$2,280 a year
UnusedSecond file-sharing service
Holds the same files as the email plan’s storage
$1,080 a year
Duplicate
4 SUBSCRIPTIONS · $30,360 A YEAR
Real costs in year one, and the catch
Licence
- A · Dock booking app
- $9,600
- B · Yard and dock suite
- $26,400
- C · Booking pages you already pay for
- $0 · in your plan
Setup and migration
- A · Dock booking app
- $3,000
- B · Yard and dock suite
- $12,500
- C · Booking pages you already pay for
- $0
Your team’s hours
- A · Dock booking app
- 80 h
- B · Yard and dock suite
- 220 h
- C · Booking pages you already pay for
- 30 h
All in, hours at $38 an hour
- A · Dock booking app
- $15,640
- B · Yard and dock suite
- $47,260
- C · Booking pages you already pay for
- $1,140
The catch
- A · Dock booking app
- A second login for the floor
- B · Yard and dock suite
- A three-year term, and a yard module you do not need
- C · Booking pages you already pay for
- No text reminders to carriers, no detention timer
| Compared on | A · Dock booking app | B · Yard and dock suite | C · Booking pages you already pay for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licence | $9,600 | $26,400 | $0 · in your plan |
| Setup and migration | $3,000 | $12,500 | $0 |
| Your team’s hours | 80 h | 220 h | 30 h |
| All in, hours at $38 an hour | $15,640 | $47,260 | $1,140 |
| The catch | A second login for the floor | A three-year term, and a yard module you do not need | No text reminders to carriers, no detention timer |
Recommendation
Buy nothing now
Set up one booking page per dock door in the plan you already pay for. Look again at A if detention charges pass $2,000 a month.
No vendor pays us a commission or a referral fee for anything on this page. The decision, and any purchase, is yours.
What you get.
- A shortlist matched to the specific job, with the trade-offs stated, not smoothed over.
- An audit of your current subscriptions, including anything already paid for that does the job.
- Real costs: licence, setup, migration, and the hours it takes your own team.
- The recommendation in writing, including the cases where it is to buy nothing at all.
How it works.
Priced against the scope, after a Diagnostic that is small on purpose. The shape of the work we can tell you now.
- THE SHAPE
- One fixed-scope pass, ending in a recommendation.
- WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU
- Your current software bill, and a clear statement of the job to be done.
- WHAT YOU KEEP
- The comparison, which stays useful the next time this question comes round.
What this does not include.
Published because you should know before the call, not after the invoice.
- Referral arrangements. We take no commission — that is not a courtesy, it is the reason to ask us.
- Negotiating the contract or managing the purchase on your behalf.
QUESTIONS
Do you resell any of this?
No. No commissions, no referral fees, no reseller margin. That is what lets us tell you to keep what you have, which a reseller cannot afford to say.
We already bought the wrong thing.
Then we weigh the cost of switching against making it work. Sunk cost is a bad reason to stay, but novelty is a worse reason to move.
Will you just recommend building something?
If the job needs something built we will say so, and we will flag that it is us saying it. The brief is yours and you are free to take it to anybody.
MORE UNDER TEAM ENABLEMENT
WHERE THIS APPLIES
The industries whose page names Team Enablement as one of the places we would start. Each one is written for that trade, with its own numbers.
Bring us one bad week.
Book a pilot call. Tell us where the week goes wrong, and we’ll tell you what an Operations Diagnostic would map and measure.
The first paid step has a clear scope and an end date, and the pilot after it is one workflow — not a platform, and not an open-ended retainer.
Free · 20 minutes · no commitment