Enduring systems for founder led firms
Not software you buy, configure and then maintain. It is built in phases, so the first part is in daily use while the rest is still being made, and it is operated for you month to month rather than handed over for you to look after. What changes is that your business stops running on your memory.
What changes
A firm that cannot run a normal day without the founder in it has not built a business yet, it has built a very demanding job. The work is to take the decisions you currently make from memory and write them into something the firm can reach without you.
Who you would be working with
Business Systems Architect
Natraj is who you would work with directly. The person who sits with you to understand how the firm runs is the same person who designs the data model, writes the business logic, and runs the system once it is live.
That means the reasoning behind every decision in your system is held by someone you can still call a year later, not lost in a handoff between people who never spoke to you.
That matters more for a system that is run than for one that is delivered and left. There is no support queue standing between you and the person who designed it, and no conversation that starts with explaining your own business to somebody who has to look it up first.
How it works
I do not begin with technology. I begin by understanding your business, which means coming to see it work rather than hearing it described. What gets built is decided by what is actually happening on the floor, and once it is live I keep it running and keep it changing as the firm does.
Getting there is one job, paid once, and it covers all of it: understanding the firm, fitting the modules it needs, setting up a cloud account in your own name, moving in the records you already keep, and training the people who will use it. Procurement, installation, licences and servers are not on that list because they are not yours to handle. It ends with the firm running on its first module rather than holding a document about it.
The only things it needs from you are that first visit, access to what you already use, and a look at each phase before it goes live. The rest of the work is mine.
What I design
Six of them, and a firm runs the ones it needs: customer and orders, inventory and stock, purchasing and vendors, delivery and fulfilment, payments and transactions, and the reporting that comes out of all of it. Each one below is a screen from the system that does it. You take the ones the firm actually uses, because every module that exists has to be maintained, understood and paid for, and one nobody opens costs you something every year.
Authentication, role based permissions, audit trails, reconciliation and automation are not extras with a price of their own. They are what makes a system worth trusting with the firm's records, so every system I design has them from the first day.
What it costs to run
Month to month, with thirty days notice to stop. There is no minimum term and no cancellation charge, so leaving is a notice rather than a negotiation. No figure is published here because the monthly depends on which modules a firm runs and at what scale, and a number printed without knowing either would be a guess dressed up as a price.
Questions
I study how a firm currently operates, identify where work is duplicated, where information is retyped, where risk sits and where the firm depends on what one person remembers, then design the system that removes those problems. The design comes before any decision about software, platform or database.
If a normal day cannot run without you in it, if the same work gets redone by hand every time, or if nobody can say how the business is doing without checking three different places, that is what this fixes. If none of that is true, you do not need me yet. It also only works for a firm ready to change how it works and not just what it runs on, since a new screen over the same undocumented process is not what this is for, and it is not for a firm that already has a written architecture and only needs it built.
No, and it is better if you do not. Arriving with a chosen platform means the decision that costs the most has already been made without a diagnosis. Four lines about how your firm runs today is a better starting point than a specification.
Off the shelf software fits the average firm, which means it fits no firm exactly. Whatever it does not cover becomes a spreadsheet beside it, then a workaround, then something only you remember how to do, and the system ends up designed by accident, one workaround at a time, instead of on purpose. A no code tool has the same shape: fast to start, and fast for exactly as long as the business stays simple. None of them are wrong on their own. They are decisions about technology taken before anyone has looked at how the firm actually runs.
You are not waiting for a finished system. The build is phased, and the first module goes into daily use while the next one is still being built, so the firm has something working early rather than a launch date somewhere in the distance. How long the whole of it takes depends on how many modules the firm needs. Anything added later, such as a mobile screen for floor staff, uses the architecture that is already there rather than starting a rebuild.
Three things. A one time onboarding fee to get the firm live, a monthly subscription paid in advance which covers running the system, supporting it and every update and improvement to it, and your own cloud bill, charged by the provider directly to an account in your firm's name with nothing added by me. Anything beyond that is quoted and agreed before the work starts. No amount is published here because the monthly depends on which modules you run and at what scale.
You own your business data, always. The software itself is licensed to you for as long as the subscription runs, and saswatlife keeps ownership of the platform and the components it is built from. That is the trade, stated plainly: you are not buying a codebase to maintain, you are paying for one that is maintained for you. If owning the source code outright matters more to you than having it run and kept working, say so early, because this is not the right arrangement for that.
It sits in a cloud account in your firm's own name rather than inside a system of mine that other firms share, and it stays yours. Within it, people see what their role needs and nothing further, and what they do is recorded, which is what an audit trail is for. I see it because running and supporting the system requires it, and for no other reason: it is never sold, never handed to anyone else, and never used to train anything. Backups are taken regularly and kept for as long as the subscription runs. No system is beyond failure, so that is a description of how this one is built rather than a promise that nothing can go wrong, and if something does you hear it from me without waiting to be asked.
No. There is nothing for you to procure, install, license, host or hire for. The cloud account is set up in your firm's name and the provider bills you directly, but everything running on it is mine to look after. If your firm does have technical people they are welcome in the conversation, it simply does not depend on them.
You give thirty days notice, access continues through it, and then the system stops. The project is archived for thirty days after that and deleted once they pass. There is no minimum term and no cancellation charge. No source code or documents are handed over. Your own business records are a separate matter and can be exported while you are still subscribed, which is the point at which to do it.
Yes, while you are subscribed. Ask and it is exported for you, or you can take the backup that is already being kept. After a subscription has lapsed it is no longer that simple: an export then means resubscribing and paying for the extraction, priced by how involved the migration is. Doing it before you stop costs nothing, so do it before you stop.
Only where interpretation, prediction or generation genuinely adds value. Most of what a firm needs is rule based logic instead, which is cheaper, testable, and does the same thing every time. A rule that reorders stock below a threshold does not need a model, and a rule you can test is not the liability an unreviewed judgement can be.
Both, in that order. Understanding how a firm runs means being in it, so that part happens at your own place of business rather than on a call. The design, the build and running the system afterwards are all remote, over call and screen share. The practice is registered in India, and there is no walk in office to come to, so the meeting that matters happens at yours.
It is about how your firm runs today. There is nothing to sign, no proposal presented and no specification required. If the work is not a fit, saying so early costs both of us less than starting.
Where this starts
Nothing to prepare and nothing to sign. Tell me what the firm does and what still comes back to you on a normal week, and I will tell you whether a system would help or whether it would not. The figures come after that, because before it they would be a guess.