Services · Systems diagnostic
Find the systems costing you time before you pay to fix them.
A paid diagnostic across technology, marketing operations and workflows. Two to three weeks, one written document and a ranked order of work with a baseline against it.
Ace takes the first call. Bring your numbers.
Price to start
A$5,000 – A$8,000
- Duration
- 2–3 weeks, kick-off to handover call
- Your time
- Roughly 6–10 hours, mostly the ops lead
- You keep
- The document, whatever happens next
The problem
Your systems disagree. The cost is hiding in people’s calendars.
Shopify, the warehouse, the ad platforms and finance all hold a version of the same business. The joins between them are where capable people lose Thursday morning rebuilding the truth.
Meanwhile the actual cost in your business is invisible. It’s not a line item. It is a capable person spending Thursday morning reconciling three systems that disagree, a support queue full of questions the order data could answer, and a production or fulfilment decision made on a stale number because the fresh one takes an hour to assemble.
Buying another app does not reveal whether the actual problem is technology, the way marketing work moves, or a workflow nobody owns. That distinction matters because each has a different and very differently priced fix.
So the first job is not choosing a model, app or vendor. It is writing down what the operation costs you today, in hours and in errors, with enough precision that a change would be visible. Everything else follows from that, including the decision not to build.
| Lens | What we inspect |
|---|---|
| Technology | Shopify, inventory, fulfilment, finance, data ownership and the joins between them. |
| Marketing operations | Campaign data, creative flow, product feeds, attribution and the reporting rebuilt by hand. |
| Workflow operations | Queues, approvals, exceptions, handoffs and the repetitive work sitting between systems. |
One diagnostic, three operating lenses.
- Technology
- What we inspectShopify, inventory, fulfilment, finance, data ownership and the joins between them.
- Marketing operations
- What we inspectCampaign data, creative flow, product feeds, attribution and the reporting rebuilt by hand.
- Workflow operations
- What we inspectQueues, approvals, exceptions, handoffs and the repetitive work sitting between systems.
The method
Six steps, in this order, every time.
It is deliberately unglamorous. The value is in doing the counting before the choosing, which is the step everyone skips because it is the only part that isn’t fun.
Step 1. Map the operation end to end
Order in to cash collected, including the returns loop and the exceptions. We sit with the people doing the work rather than the people describing it, because the description and the work are rarely the same thing. This is where most of the two to three weeks goes, and it is the part vendors skip.Step 2. Count the repetitive work
A task inventory: what happens, how many times a week, how long each instance takes, how much it varies, and who does it. Anything that happens two hundred times a week and always the same way is a candidate. Anything that happens twice a year is not, no matter how annoying it is.Step 3. Test each candidate against four questions
Is the volume high enough that saving minutes matters? Can the rules be written down by a human before a model is involved? Is a wrong answer recoverable, or does it go straight to a customer? Is the underlying data clean enough that a system could read it today? A candidate that fails any of the four goes on the no list with the reason written next to it.Nothing gets built until this exists
Step 4. Set the baseline
The numbers as they stand, written down and dated: hours per week by task, error and rework rates, where the systems disagree and by how much. Without that baseline, no later change can prove that it worked.Step 5. Rank the work and price it
A written order of work: what to do first, second and third, what each one is likely to cost, and what it should return. Every item is marked build, buy, automate, change the process or leave alone.Step 6. Hand it over
The document is yours. If you take it to your own developers, or to a cheaper firm, or to nobody at all, the engagement has still done its job. That is what charging for it buys — a document that does not have to end in a proposal.
Qualifying
Who this is for, and who it isn’t.
The second list is longer than most firms would print. It saves everyone a fortnight.
This is for you if
- You are doing between $1M and $50M and the operation has outgrown the tools that got you here.
- There is at least one process someone performs a hundred or more times a week, by hand, the same way each time.
- Your systems disagree with each other and somebody rebuilds the truth in a spreadsheet.
- You can give us read access to real data — orders, inventory, fulfilment, support tickets.
- You want to know what not to do as much as what to do.
This is not for you if
- You are pre-revenue or pre-product. There is nothing to measure yet, and a baseline of zero is not a baseline.
- You need a strategy deck for a board or an investor. We write working documents, and they are not attractive.
- The decision is already made and you want it validated. We will probably disagree in writing, which is an expensive way to buy agreement.
- You want a storefront chatbot. Gorgias, Intercom and similar do that well and cost a fraction of this.
- You want an organisation-wide programme with a change-management workstream. That is a different kind of firm and they exist.
Scope and price
A number before we start.
The range is where these engagements land, not an opening bid. The variable is how many systems are in play and how bad the data is. We agree the figure in writing before the kick-off call.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Duration | 2–3 weeks, from kick-off to the handover call |
| Price | A$5,000 – A$8,000, quoted before we start |
| Your time | Roughly 6–10 hours across the engagement, mostly the ops lead |
| Access needed | Read access to Shopify, your 3PL or WMS, support desk, and finance exports |
| Deliverable | One written document: reconciliation map, hours bill, ranked order of work, baseline |
| What happens next | Nothing automatically. A build is quoted separately, or not at all |
Commerce Systems Diagnostic — engagement shape
- Duration
- Detail2–3 weeks, from kick-off to the handover call
- Price
- DetailA$5,000 – A$8,000, quoted before we start
- Your time
- DetailRoughly 6–10 hours across the engagement, mostly the ops lead
- Access needed
- DetailRead access to Shopify, your 3PL or WMS, support desk, and finance exports
- Deliverable
- DetailOne written document: reconciliation map, hours bill, ranked order of work, baseline
- What happens next
- DetailNothing automatically. A build is quoted separately, or not at all
Questions
What people ask before booking.
Eight of them, in the words we would use on the call.
It is mapping the technology, marketing operations and workflows behind an ecommerce business before anyone spends money fixing them. We count the repetitive work, reconcile the numbers and write a ranked list of what to buy, build, automate, change or leave alone.
A free audit is a sales document. It was always going to conclude that you need the thing the firm sells, which is exactly why nobody believes the findings. Charging for it removes that. We are paid for the analysis, so the analysis can say 'buy this off the shelf' or 'do nothing here' without costing us anything.
Two differences matter. We set a measured baseline — hours, error rates and the size of each discrepancy — so later work can be judged against something other than opinion. And the people doing it are running ecommerce operations this week, so the judgement comes from handling the exceptions rather than reading about them.
Then that is what the document says, and you keep the document. It is a common outcome. Off-the-shelf software has got considerably better, and a well-configured standard stack beats a mediocre custom build every time. Finding that out for the price of a diagnostic rather than the price of a build is the point.
Yes, read access at minimum — orders, inventory, fulfilment events, support tickets and finance exports. Without real data we would be guessing, and a strategy built on guesses is what produced the pilots that never went anywhere. We work under an NDA and we do not need write access to anything.
Roughly six to ten hours in total, most of it from whoever runs operations, spread across the two to three weeks. We would rather spend an hour standing next to the person doing a task than three hours in a workshop about it.
Yes. Most of it is asynchronous — data review, mapping, writing — with scheduled calls in overlapping hours for the US and Europe. If a piece of the operation genuinely needs someone physically present, we will tell you that during scoping rather than after you have paid.
Nothing, unless you want it to. If you want us to build the first item on the list, it is quoted separately as fixed-scope work with a number agreed before anything starts. Plenty of clients take the document to their own team instead, and that is a legitimate outcome we priced for.
Next step
Start with the diagnostic.
Two to three weeks, A$5,000 to A$8,000, and a document you keep regardless of what happens next.
Ace takes these calls. Not a salesperson, because there isn’t one.