All My Systems

All My Systems Increasing customer happiness and improving business insight. We provide Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Data Anlaysis and web design expertise to businesses.

Connecting two systems in real time is often the most expensive way to solve the problem.Someone says "these two need to...
16/10/2026

Connecting two systems in real time is often the most expensive way to solve the problem.

Someone says "these two need to talk to each other." Suddenly it's a live integration project.

But nobody asked how fast the data needs to move.

Before you connect anything, ask:

• Will anyone make a decision in the next five minutes based on this data?
• Would a daily export do the job? (Yesterday's invoices as a CSV into the finance system, say.)
• Do you need two systems at all, or could one do it?

Live connections have a running cost. Someone has to monitor them, fix them when something changes, and untangle the mess when a record fails halfway.

A daily file is dull. It's also easy to understand and easy to fix.

Where this fails: stock levels on a website, or payment status when a customer rings you. If a stale answer loses you a sale, pay for the live link.

Everywhere else, start with the boring option. Upgrade when someone can name the pain.

Every connection is something you maintain forever. Which one would you delete if you could?

14/10/2026

You've spent a fortune on a new system...but your team is using it as a spreadsheet with nicer screens.

The screens look different, you've gone live, and everyone relaxes. But if people are inputting exactly what they used to put into Excel, nothing has really changed. You've just put an expensive spreadsheet in place.

So what is it that makes a difference?

• Automation. This field over here triggers that one, which updates the one over there.
• Using the data you already have, so nobody's keying things in twice.
• Reporting you can trust.
• Making the screens as friendly and useful as possible for the person using them every day.

Those are the things that change how users work day in, day out. They also lift your data quality and the reports you pull out.

And train your users properly. Make sure they're on board and they buy into why things are changing. If they don't, they'll quietly carry on as before.

Going live isn't the finish line. Put some time into getting the most out of the platform you've paid for.

If your team looked at your system today, would they say it saves them time, or just gives them more typing?

Ask three people to sketch how an order moves through your business. You'll probably get three different drawings.That's...
09/10/2026

Ask three people to sketch how an order moves through your business. You'll probably get three different drawings.

That's the napkin test. Two minutes, a pen and a napkin.

If nobody can sketch the process quickly, it's hard to train people on, hard to support and hard to fix when it breaks.

The sketch usually shows up the extras. A duplicate entry. An approval nobody remembers adding. A spreadsheet on the side.

Simple designs are easier to live with.

Try it on one core process this week:

Pick one (order to invoice works well)
-Ask three people to sketch it separately
-Lay the drawings side by side
-Different drawings? That's your starting point. Fix it before you add anything new.

If it won't fit on a napkin, it's probably too complicated to run well.

07/10/2026

You're keeping someone in the wrong role because their numbers look good. But it's costing you more than you think.

Picture your best person. Or if you haven't got one, the best person in your network. Always on their A game, confident, trustworthy, likeable. Those are the qualities that are important.

But if you have someone who:

- Doesn't do work you'd expect early on
- Misses deadlines
- Upsets team members
- Doesn't fit your culture
..maybe they're relying on some superstar skills or results to mask all of it.

But it unravels over time. The unrest in your team can't be contained forever, and then it spills out to your customers. They pick up odd conversations, odd words, odd tones of voice.

Strong results rarely make up for a poor culture fit.

02/10/2026

Ask your team what they do outside the system to get their job done. I'd bet a spreadsheet comes up.

Systems rarely fall over overnight, they tend to just get a bit more annoying every month.

For a while, it's fine....

Then you start to see:

• Spreadsheets patching the gaps in your main system
• Things falling through the cracks, with nobody holding a clear picture in the reports
• Your team finding workarounds instead of working in the system
• More time spent managing data than using it

Any one of those is easy to shrug off but all together they create friction, and from my experience that usually means the system has stopped fitting the business.

Waiting until your system breaks is the most expensive maintenance plan you can buy. You pay for it in rework and chasing people for numbers long before anything actually fails.

So try it this week. Ask three people, and write the list down. Don't fix anything yet.

Workarounds are the earliest warning you'll get, and they cost nothing to find.

30/09/2026

You think your business is too unique for off-the-shelf software. If we're honest with ourselves, it probably isn't.

Building your own sounds appealing until you realise what comes with it.

You get the ultimate flexibility but the price is complexity and a longer timeframe, because you're starting from the ground up: security model, data model, front end, back end and every requirement.

Buying gives you speed, but it can limit flexibility. Unless it's highly configurable which you can shape it more, and develop on top when you hit the limits. From my experience, the need to build from scratch is very much an edge case now.

Custom software has another risk. You're beholden to a smaller company who built it for you. With a big platform, plenty of other consultancies and individuals can pick it up later.

If you've always built and you've got a skilled team, fine, but that's not most businesses.

For most, buy plus configurability is a very strong option nowadays.

25/09/2026

A spreadsheet can be exactly the right answer.

Until everyone starts relying on it.....

I bloody love a spreadsheet.

For the right intended purpose, it’s fantastic.

You need a quick and dirty solution? Great.

You need some analysis? Brilliant.

You want to model a scenario before making a bigger decision? That’s a good place to start.

But the minute it becomes shared and turns into an operational system in your business, things can go wrong very quickly.

You get:

• Multiple versions
• Manual updates
• Conflicting figures
• Important information living in one person’s laptop

That’s when the spreadsheet becomes more than a tool. It becomes a risk.

So yes, use Excel for the right size of problem, it might be exactly what you need.

Just don’t let a useful spreadsheet gradually become the system your whole business depends on.

23/09/2026

Your inbox isn't your to-do list. It's everyone else's, and most of us agree to work through it first thing.

I stopped doing that years ago.

Not because email doesn't matter. It does, and it will for a long while yet. But email is people asking for your time, on their timeframe.

So mornings are for the important work now. And what you get back is worth it:

-Your sharpest hours go on the work that needs them
-You finish the day knowing the important thing is done
-You stop hitting 4pm shattered, staring at a job you keep pushing to tomorrow

That last point is a biggie. I went through a long stretch of exactly that, and it's a horrible place to be.

The system is dead simple. A 10 second glance at the inbox. If there's nothing critical, email is out of my head completely. No notifications, no sound.

People still get answers. It's just more likely to be an afternoon, or a quick holding response while I go and do the investigating properly.

Most things can be dealt with in a timely way. Timely just doesn't have to mean immediately.

18/09/2026

The best CV in your shortlist could potentially be your worst hire this year.

I've made a few mistakes building our team. One of the biggest was hiring for skill, not attitude.

You've heard that before. I'm sure you have. Doesn't stop you doing it though.

What happens sometimes is you get the superstar. Wonderful skills, would be brilliant on the project. And then they turn up and they don't really want to contribute to the business the way the rest of your team do. They don't fit in. They don't adopt the culture.

That's a horrible place to be. And it's never just about that one person either. It pulls everyone around them down too.

You can always train skill. You can't train attitude. If someone doesn't turn up with the right mindset, it's a non starter.

So if you're recruiting today, or you've got interviews lined up this week, and that superstar walks in with the perfect CV. Try to look past it for a minute.

Have they got the right attitude to fit in with your business, work with your team, and look after your customers?

Because from my experience, that's the bit that's critical.

Hire for attitude. You can sort the skill out later.

16/09/2026

Someone asks you a 'quick question' at ten and you're still trying to get your head back into the work at half past.

They knocked, or they Teamsed you. They got their answer and off they went, totally happy.

But you were in flow, and flow doesn't come back on demand. It can take 10, 15, even 30 minutes to get anywhere near the same quality of work again.

You can't stop interruptions and you'll get them most of the day, every day, but what you can do is make them shorter.

What works for me:

- Protect the time before you need it. Tell your team when you're heads down and when you're free. Most people are fine with "I'll come and find you at three."
- Be honest about emergencies. If the building's on fire, fine. That's about 1% of interruptions. The rest can wait.
- Don't interrupt yourself. Phone off, email notifications off, Teams off.
- Write the name down and forget about it. I use OneNote for everything, but paper works just as well.

That last one's a biggie. If five people interrupt you before lunch and you're carrying five names round in your head, your subconscious spends the afternoon working on the wrong list. That's far from ideal.

Twenty seconds is all it needs. "Can't talk now, I'll come to you later." Note it down. Back to work.

Protected time isn't rude. It's how the important things get finished.

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