Run it manually
Manual delivery can expose the real requirements, provided the learning is captured and the risk to customers is controlled.
D/03The market is ready.
The market is ready.
Your systems aren't.
The business can see a valuable new service, commercial model or customer experience. Delivering it means forcing unfamiliar work through systems designed for the old proposition.
The proposition moved beyond the systems behind it.
A new service rarely affects one screen. It may change how work is priced, sold, scheduled, fulfilled, supported, invoiced and measured. The customer sees one promise; internally, that promise crosses several systems and teams.
Early demand can be served manually to learn what matters. The danger begins when the temporary process becomes the permanent operating model, or when the company delays the launch until every system has been redesigned.
The useful question is not whether to build a platform. It is what the business must be able to do reliably for the new service to deserve its next customer.
The same event can create exposure or advantage.
The fear
The opportunity passes while the company waits for its systems.
Competitors learn faster, the launch becomes a sequence of exceptions and early customers experience the gap between the promise and the operation.
The ambition
Strategic ideas become executable.
The business can test the service with real customers, learn where the operating model needs to change and expand without rebuilding it after every sale.
How the constraint shows up.
01
Sales can explain the proposition, but operations cannot describe how it will be fulfilled.
02
The new service requires information spread across several systems.
03
Pricing or invoicing does not fit the current commercial model.
04
A pilot depends on a small group manually coordinating every customer.
05
The launch date depends on a vendor feature with no committed delivery date.
06
Teams are designing a large platform before testing the riskiest customer promise.
The first version should test the service, not imitate the finished company.
01
02
Wait for the core platform
A vendor feature may eventually fit, but the business gives up control of timing and the ability to shape the service through evidence.
03
Build the complete product
A large upfront build can encode untested assumptions before the company knows which part of the proposition creates value.
Prove the promise that carries the most commercial risk.
Identify the smallest end-to-end capability that lets a real customer experience the service and the business learn whether it can deliver it.
Q/01
Which customer promise would most damage confidence if the operation failed to keep it?
Q/02
What can be learned manually, and what must be reliable from the first transaction?
Q/03
Which existing systems should remain systems of record?
Q/04
What evidence would justify investing in the next version?
The right answer may be to change the process, configure a product, integrate what you already have, modernise one part or build an owned capability. ORBN helps make that decision before it helps deliver it.
Own the capability that makes the proposition distinctive.
Buy the standard foundations where they are adequate. Keep control of the rules, experience and operational feedback loop that allow the service to improve faster than a generic product.
OWN / 01
The commercial and operational rules that define the new proposition.
OWN / 02
The data that shows whether the customer promise and unit economics are working.
OWN / 03
The ability to change the service as evidence replaces the original assumptions.
Continue the decision.
Guide
Should you build or buy?
Score the strategic fit, ownership, integration and change requirements before choosing.
ServiceCustom software development
Create a focused first release around the part of the service that needs to be distinctive.
ServiceCloud-native applications
Build a secure, observable foundation that can grow as the service proves itself.
What else changed?
What changed?Make the new service
Make the new service
operable.
Bring the promise you want to make and the part of the operation least ready to keep it. We will help define the first useful release.