You built your business around doing things the right way. Your technology choices should reflect that.

I call it Ritual Mimicry

Most software decisions aren't really decisions. They're inherited, copied, or assumed. Someone sets up the website and some default analytics tool is part of the package. The CRM is whatever the last agency used. The email platform is what everyone seems to use.

I call this ritual mimicry: going through the motions of choosing without actually choosing.

The result is software that's vaguely adequate: just functional enough to keep, never good enough to love.

The interface assumes everyone speaks English. Half the team has given up on features that technically exist but are too complicated to actually use. Reports take so long to load that people have stopped checking them. The mobile app is an afterthought. There's a workaround for the workaround, and someone's maintaining a spreadsheet alongside the system that was supposed to replace spreadsheets.

You live with it because it works, mostly, and because switching sounds exhausting. Until you need to leave and discover that your data doesn't export properly, your communication history won't migrate, and what should take two weeks will take four months.

The longer these choices go unexamined, the harder they are to undo. Not because the software gets worse, but because it gets embedded: in workflows, in training, in workarounds, in the contracts you've signed.

I've seen organisations discover, when it suddenly mattered, that they couldn't actually prove where their client data was stored. I've watched a two-week CRM migration turn into four months because the old system exported contacts but not communication history. These aren't always disasters, but they're expensive, exhausting, and entirely avoidable.

What I do

I spend time with your team. I ask questions. I find out what's actually working, what isn't, and what people need (which isn't always what the brief says).

I test software properly: not a half-hour demo, but days or weeks of real use. I read the documentation, test the support teams, and explore the edge cases.

When a vendor claims their product is “European” or “sovereign” or “GDPR-compliant”, I check what that actually means. Where are the servers? Who owns the company? What law applies when things go wrong? Where do the asterisks lead?

And before you commit, I make sure you'll be able to leave when you need to. What format does your data export in? What would migration realistically cost? How much of your history would you lose?

If you're dealing with developers or agencies who know more jargon than you, I'm the person asking the questions you might not think to ask. If a proposal feels off but you can't quite say why, I can usually tell you what's bothering you.

People I've worked with

A sustainable packaging company that had been fighting their project management platform for years. The tool was built for teams three times their size. I replaced it with something that matched how they actually worked: simpler, European-hosted, and half the price.

A bicycle leasing company whose email marketing platform was underdelivering. They needed a replacement that actually worked with their very specific email needs. I found one.

A European organisation for natural healthcare ingredients, replacing an analytics setup they'd outgrown. I built a stack that gave them better insight, didn't track sensitive data, and kept everything in Europe.