Take it over. Get it moving. Hand it back.
You funded it, something got built, and it never made it into anyone's daily work. We take it over, get it into daily use, and hand it back with someone on your side owning it. The handback is the part most firms skip, and it is usually why the last attempt did not stick.
How we see it
Models are close to commodity now. They work, they are cheap, and you can swap providers in an afternoon. Almost nothing fails there.
What fails is everything around them. The data that lives in four systems with three competing definitions of a customer. The approval step that exists only in someone's head. The integration that works until the vendor changes an endpoint. The owner who leaves.
None of that is new, and none of it is about AI. It is the same integration and ownership problem that has been killing technology projects for thirty years, wearing better clothes. Which is good news, because it means the work is known and the failure modes are predictable.
Building it is the cheap part, and it gets cheaper every quarter. The expensive part is the six months afterward, when whoever built it has moved on, nobody wrote down why any of it works the way it does, and it quietly stops being used.
Why it stalls
None of those are machine learning problems. They are delivery problems, which is why they keep happening to companies with good engineers.
How it works
We sit with the people doing the work. You get a ranked list of what is worth automating and an honest read on what is not. Useful even if you stop here.
Integrated with your real systems, not a demo. Quoted fixed before we start, so there are no hourly surprises.
For context, that is a fraction of one loaded engineering hire, and it is roughly what the attempt that already failed cost you before anybody called it a loss.
A weekly status your executives can act on without calling a meeting, a decision log so nobody relitigates a choice made in March, and the escalation the day a date stops being realistic rather than the week after it slips.
Documentation, a runbook, and a named owner on your side. If we cannot identify that owner, we will tell you the thing will rot, because it will. If what you need next is proof that it is governed, that is Assay, our sister practice.
Delivered is not the bar. Three months after we leave, is anyone still using it without being reminded. That is the only measure that has ever mattered.
Honest comparison
What we put behind it
Every firm in this market promises satisfaction. That is not a commitment, it is a mood. Ours is a date and an obligation.
The exception is access. If we cannot get into the systems, or the people who know how the work is done are never made available, the clock is yours, not ours. We will say that early and in plain language rather than quietly running out the engagement.
Whether this fits
Typically 50 to 500 people, not a software company, with something built or bought that has not made it into daily use. Someone senior is already frustrated about it. That is the shape of most of this work.
Where we are the wrong call:
Questions we get
No. There is nothing to buy from us and no reseller margin anywhere in this. We build on what you already have, or on tooling you choose and own outright.
That is the first stage, and it is the most common starting point. Most teams know something is wasting time and cannot name it precisely. Finding it is the first deliverable.
You do, completely. Handover includes documentation, a runbook, and a named owner on your side. We are not trying to become a dependency you cannot remove.
Yes, and often that is the job. Someone has to hold the vendor to a definition of done and keep your side moving.
The first stage is one to two weeks and that part is predictable. After that it depends on three things: how many systems it has to touch, how clean the data is when we get there, and how quickly decisions come back from your side. The third one moves timelines more than the other two combined, and it is the one most firms will not tell you about up front. We scope real dates with you before anything starts, and we tell you early when one is not going to hold.
Often you should, and if you have the bandwidth we will say so on the first call. The reason it usually stalls is not capability, it is that integration work expands. Auth, rate limits, pagination, retries, and reconciling data between systems that disagree about what a customer is. That work quietly consumes a chunk of a roadmap your engineers were already committed to, and it is the reason so many of these projects get built and then shelved. We absorb that, and we leave.
For one clean workflow between two systems with good connectors, yes, and it will cost you a few hundred dollars a year instead of tens of thousands. Do that. It stops working when the data lives in several systems with competing definitions, when there is no off the shelf connector, or when you need real error handling and an audit trail. That is when a workflow tool becomes a liability rather than a shortcut.
Build engagements run $25,000 to $50,000, quoted fixed before work starts. Fractional program management is priced monthly. The first stage is scoped separately, so you can stop after it and still walk away with the ranked list.
If the work is not in daily use by the people it was built for on the day we hand it back, we keep working it at no additional cost for up to sixty days until it is. The fixed price quoted before work starts is the price on the invoice. The one exception is access: if we cannot reach the systems, or the people who know how the work is done are never made available, that is outside our control and we will say so early rather than quietly running out the clock.
Strake Systems, operating under Control and Function LLC, a Denver based consulting practice. The same firm runs a compliance readiness practice at controlandfunction.com and an AI governance practice at assayassurance.com.
Start here
Thirty minutes. Describe what stalled and we will tell you straight whether we can help. If we cannot, we will say so, and you will still leave with a clearer read on why it stalled.