WORKED EXAMPLE: synthetic business, not client work. The company, every person, every supplier and every figure on this page are invented. No engagement has taken place.
Worked example: adding EDI to a fifteen-year-old bespoke ERP
We do not publish client work, and we have no case studies to show you. So instead of telling you what a solution pack contains, this page shows one: a complete pack for an invented distributor, written the way we would write it for you. It is here so you can judge the format, the depth and the reasoning before you talk to us.
The situation
Bardolent Supplies Ltd is an invented UK distributor of fixings, tooling and safety equipment, with two depots. Orders, stock and the sales ledger run on a bespoke ERP built in 2011 by a supplier that no longer trades. Stock location is not in the ERP at all; it lives in a shared spreadsheet edited by six people.
Three large customers have written to say they will require standard EDI messaging (orders, order responses and dispatch advice) as a condition of staying a supplier. The ERP's only integration point is a nightly batch of flat files. There is no API.
What the pack contains
Worked example · every figure synthetic
- Part
- Discovery notes
- What it shows
- Five stakeholders by role, what each cares about and the constraint each brings; the current process in prose; the pain points with the numbers people quote; the constraints (a pick-season change freeze, the IT manager's leave inside the design phase, no API); and the questions asked, with the answers
Worked example · every figure synthetic
- Part
- Current-state flowchart
- What it shows
- The process as it actually runs: three order routes, manual re-keying, a spreadsheet check, allocation by judgement, a paper dispatch note
Worked example · every figure synthetic
- Part
- Target-state flowchart
- What it shows
- What changes and what stays: the ERP stays the record for sales and pricing; a new module becomes the record for stock location; EDI messages flow hourly
Worked example · every figure synthetic
- Part
- Wireframes
- What it shows
- Three low-fidelity screens that change, including an allocation exception queue
Worked example · every figure synthetic
- Part
- Options
- What it shows
- Three options (a bridge only; an integration layer plus a stock-location module; a full re-platform), each with a cost band, risk, reversibility, time and what can go wrong
Worked example · every figure synthetic
- Part
- Decision note
- What it shows
- The recommendation, what was rejected and why, and four named sign-offs: business case, ERP feasibility, budget, and operational acceptance
Worked example · every figure synthetic
- Part
- Delivery plan
- What it shows
- Milestones with acceptance criteria, who does what (the architect, the client's own ERP support partner and the EDI hub vendor, coordinated rather than subcontracted), phased cutover outside the freeze, and a rollback route for each stage
Three things it shows about how we work
Options, not a single answer. The cheapest option would have met the customers' deadline and left a spreadsheet as the real record of stock, so the first allocation error would reach a customer as a confirmed order. The most expensive option was three to four times the board's ceiling (synthetic) and answered a bigger question than the one on the table. The pack writes all three down, so the sponsor chooses with the trade-offs in front of her.
Designed around the people and the calendar. No change during pick season. No design decision that depends on one person being in the room during her leave. The pilot runs at the depot with spare supervisors, because the warehouse manager said that would make it a fair test.
A way back at every stage. The new stock module runs in shadow alongside the spreadsheet before anything is retired. Each customer's EDI channel is switched on one at a time, with the old channel kept open until three clean weeks. A failure in the new layer falls back to the overnight batch, without touching the ledger.
What this example is not
- Not a client, past or present. Bardolent Supplies Ltd does not exist; the name was checked against UK company-name search on 2026-09-19.
- Not a quote. The cost bands are illustrative. How we price real work is on /engagements/.
- Not a template filled in. Every real discovery starts from your own facts.
See the full pack
The full pack (seven parts, with flowcharts and wireframes) is available on request, to open on screen in a first conversation or to send ahead of one. There is no download.
Every engagement is architected by me, and I'm the person you deal with.
We take on a small number of clients at a time.