Hard problems that now have a solution.

Why it is hard

Every management system assumes the unit that comes in is the unit that goes out. If you buy by weight and sell by item, or buy concentrate and sell it diluted, that maths stops working. And it is not a tidiness problem: the product changes in between, in ratios that differ every time. Left unsolved, selling prices get calculated on a made-up cost.

How we solved it

By giving up on the impossible number. Instead of tracking the exact stock of something diluted differently every day, the system tracks cost: it records what comes in, works out the average and suggests it automatically when bottles are filled. Since it knows what arrived and what was reported, the gap surfaces without anyone hunting for it.

Where it runs today

Why it is hard

Each department builds its own spreadsheet and every one of them is right on its own. The problem shows up in questions that cross departments: whether this family already received this month’s assistance, whether that order was paid, whether the address on file is still current. Nobody is lying and nobody is wrong — there is simply nowhere to look up the whole answer.

How we solved it

By putting one thing at the centre and hanging everything else off it. Once the register of people is the axis, purchase orders, payments and assistance stop being parallel lists and become things that happened to a specific person. The query that used to cross three spreadsheets and two colleagues is answered on one screen.

Where it runs today

Why it is hard

It works fine until that person is away, or until six months go by. The car that comes back and nobody can say for certain what was done to it. The complaint taken over the phone that depended on who picked up. It is the most common problem and the most expensive one, because you do not notice it until the data is already gone.

How we solved it

By making recording cheaper than remembering. The key is not the system: it is that entering data has to be fast enough to happen right then, between one car and the next, rather than at the end of the day when nobody feels like it. What gets recorded that way stays forever and depends on no one in particular.

Where it runs today

Why it is hard

The information is there, but behind a counter that opens while people are at work. The resident who wants to start a procedure, the customer who wants to know how their repair is going: to find out, they have to interrupt someone, and that someone has to drop what they were doing. Time is lost on both sides.

How we solved it

By publishing what already existed instead of adding one more support channel. Procedures, statuses and case files become self-service from a phone, at any hour. It is not only convenience for whoever is asking: it is no longer interrupting whoever is working.

Where it runs today

Why it is hard

At the end of the day you have to reconcile what each person sold, what left the till and what is still in the store room — and those three things were written down in different places at different moments. A discrepancy always appears, and with no way to trace where it came from, it ends in an argument between people who all did their job properly.

How we solved it

By tying every movement to whoever made it, at the moment it happens. Once each sale, each payment and each stock reduction has an owner and a timestamp, closing stops being a reconstruction and becomes a read-out.

Where it runs today