Case study · Custom fabricator · Southern California
The right business platform for a fabrication shop, chosen independently
Requirements written down with the owner, 13 platforms scored against them, and an independent recommendation that fits a shop rather than a general contractor, so the team can work without everything flowing through the owner.
- Business
- Custom fabricator · Southern California
- The problem
- Everything flowed through the owner.
- The result
- 13 platforms assessed against 36 written requirements, three shortlisted, one recommended.
- Services
- Systems Roadmap, On-Demand CTO
The situation
Everything flowed through the owner.
A family-run custom fabrication shop in Southern California makes architectural metal and glass work, from doors and railings to glass enclosures, and a second product line that is manufactured in batches. Jobs ran on spreadsheets, shared documents, email and the accounting system, with purchase orders typed by hand from emailed PDFs.
A move to an off-the-shelf platform built for general contractors improved the money side but added friction: too many steps to create an estimate, no at-a-glance view of who was doing what this week, drawings and orders still spread across email and shared drives, and no way to invoice by the quantity shipped. The team could not work independently because every piece of information flowed through the owner, and a related family business was waiting to come onto the same system.
What we did
Five steps, in order.
- Step 01
Sat with the owner and wrote the requirements down: 36 of them, prioritised into must, should and could, from job tracking and visual scheduling to purchase orders that sync with the accounting system.
- Step 02
Learned from the platform already in use: what it did well, where the team was bending the business to fit the software, and the selection rules that followed. Simplicity first, scheduling visible on the shop-floor screen, and the software fits the shop rather than the reverse.
- Step 03
Re-assessed 13 platforms, including manufacturing tools that a construction-focused search had ruled out, and scored four finalists requirement by requirement.
- Step 04
Compared pricing, setup time, training and data migration for a three to five person team, growing to ten as the related business and the product line come on board.
- Step 05
Recommended a primary platform and two alternatives at different price points, with a demo script so each vendor has to prove scheduling and quantity invoicing live, on the shop's own jobs, rather than in a slide deck.
What changed
13 platforms assessed against 36 written requirements, three shortlisted, one recommended.
- A requirements list the owner can hold any vendor to, now and at renewal.
- A route to bring the related business and the product line onto the same platform as separate companies.
- An independent recommendation: no commission, no referral fee, no vendor tie.
What the team uses now
The owner is running vendor demos and trial accounts against the requirements list, with a target of going live within four to six weeks of choosing. The same list is the starting point for the AI-assisted estimating the shop wants next.
The services behind it
The same steps, available for your business.
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