Four of these are operations platforms built from inside the business rather than from a specification document; each write-up gives what it replaced, what it saved, the arithmetic behind that figure, and what a build like it costs. The fifth is the £300 website, written up the same way. Where a number rests on an assumption, the assumption is on the page.
Most software case studies are a logo, an adjective and a percentage nobody can check. These are not that. Each one names the volumes the business actually runs at, shows the arithmetic that turns those volumes into hours and pounds, and marks every assumption so you can replace it with your own and watch the answer move.
Four tools, one platform
A multi-drop run took 60–120 minutes to assemble across a CRM, a pin-map, a consumer mapping tool and a shared calendar. It now takes 5–10 minutes and one click, with driver-hours law enforced by the scheduler.
The workbook, and the inbox behind it
39 customer orders and 56 plant lines on one lorry, 78 orders live at once. Buying was rationed to three growers because each one was an email by hand — one press now reaches the whole database of 100+.
The drawing is the survey
Every job was quoted twice and drawn a third time. The surveyor now draws the fence on a tablet while measuring it, and the price, the plan and the installer job card all come out of that one survey.
Out of folders, out of the owner's head
Quoting meant a fifteen-minute juggle between a website and a spreadsheet, and an order was a folder on a shared drive. Rebuilt in 3–4 months with no bespoke software at all — just the right tools, connected.
What £300 actually looks like
A Muay Thai, MMA and BJJ gym with a loyal Instagram and no website. Two days after the content arrived: 26 pages, four video loops, a free-class lead capture, a timetable and Stripe-ready memberships — at the price on the offer page.
Real-world operations rather than software companies: nurseries and horticulture, landscaping, fencing, glazing, construction and property. The common shape is a business that measures or specifies something, prices it from a book, moves it through several pairs of hands and delivers it — where the admin between those steps is done by people retyping things.
No, and case study 004 is the argument against it. That rebuild used an existing WooCommerce catalogue, Pipedrive tailored into order management, the courier portals the business already booked through, and Zapier, Make and a little integration code — no bespoke application at all. Custom is right when the work has rules no product knows, like a fence take-off or a plant-name that has to be learned; otherwise the skill is choosing well and connecting properly.
Days to a working first version rather than months of discovery. Across the four operations builds, projects started from £5,000, £8,000 and £12,000 depending on scope, against UK agency rates of £50,000–£200,000+ over three to nine months for comparable work. Case study 003 was live in production 11 days after the first commit.
By running the new system alongside the old one on the same real work until it has earned the switch, which is how case study 004 was put in with no downtime. Most operational software fails at the changeover rather than the feature list, and a business that cannot afford a bad week will otherwise never start.
An operations audit: two days inside the working week, mapping every retyping step between your tools and costing what could be collapsed, with the numbers attached so you can decide whether any of it is worth building. It is £1,500 and guaranteed — if it cannot show at least ten recoverable hours a week with evidence, you get it back.
The short version of how all of this works sits on the byHoratio homepage, and the engagement itself usually starts with an operations audit.
If you recognised your own working week in any of the four, that is the conversation. Twenty minutes, no deck, no pitch.
HORATIO@BYHORATIO.COM
Two days inside your working week, a map of every retyping step, and a costed list of what could be collapsed.
Built from inside the business, shipped feature by feature, live in production from week one.
The jobs behind these builds, and the numbers they moved.