Specification first. Commitment second. Live software in 10 to 14 days.
Every stage of a Sysgraft build is arranged so you can see exactly what you're getting before you owe a subscription. This page walks through all five stages — including what they cost, and where the risks sit.
With Euan Pallister — the person who would run every stage on this page. No salesperson, no obligation. Thirty minutes, online or by phone.
Five stages — the last one doesn't end
The licence, before the configuration fits.
The retainer, before the dev shop understood the business.
The salesperson's promise, priced and signed, before the engineer admits the product doesn't offer it.
Different products. One sequence: commit first, find out later.
Sysgraft inverts it. The person who will build your system examines your business first. What will be built is written down, in full, and you approve that document before any subscription exists. The promise and the builder are the same person — and the promise is in writing.
Discovery: a few days that settle most of the build.
A few days of online meetings, plus some clarifying questions afterwards. The subject is your business: the systems you run, the processes those systems carry, and where decisions are hardest. Most of what gets configured is the standard Sysgraft platform, tuned to what you already operate.
Around 80% of the configuration has to be discovered before the build starts. Less than that, and the rework surfaces later — so discovery is thorough on purpose.
The fee: Discovery is paid work — in advance, and non-refundable. The bands are indicative, from £550 to £2,800 depending on turnover, and the exact figure is confirmed in writing before you pay anything.
What you keep, whatever you decide next:
Discovery report
On your business and systems.
Plain-English overview
Of what would be built.
Full technical specification
The document that gets built.
The documents are the product — and they're yours, even if you stop there.
The specification: the promise, in writing.
The specification sets out what will be built: the systems it connects to, what the bespoke part of your build does, and every specific, named field any module is allowed to write. The AI itself never writes anywhere — anything a module can write is enumerated in this document, and you approve exactly which fields before anything is built.
Sign-off is design intent, not a frozen contract. You're approving the direction; you don't need to be certain about every detail. The details settle during the 90-day tuning period, against the live system.
What the document says is what gets built. The person who wrote it has to build it too.
A generic illustration of a specification's structure — not derived from any real client document. Swappable for a real, permissioned excerpt once that permission lands.
The build: 10 to 14 days from sign-off to live, working software.
Not a pilot, not a phased rollout. The system, running, on your data, 10 to 14 days after you approve the specification.
Two weeks isn't heroics. It's what the method makes possible:
- The platform already exists. Every Sysgraft system is the same platform underneath — connected systems, plain-English questions, everything on the record — adapted to each business. The build is the adaptation, not the foundations.
- Most of the thinking is already done. Discovery resolved around 80% of the configuration before the build began. That's what the discovery fee paid for.
- Nothing is lost in handover. The person building your system wrote its specification. There is no gap between what was promised and what the engineer understood — they're the same person.
One build came in at 8 days — Foremost Pro, on What We've Built. The 10 to 14 day range is the figure that holds on a worst week, not the fastest one on record.
Live in two weeks doesn't mean finished in two weeks. The details settle against the real system — that's what the next 90 days are for.
The first 90 days: tuning until it fits.
Go-live is where fitting starts, not where delivery ends. For 90 days after your system is live, fine-tuning is included: adjustments and refinements as your team actually uses it, made against the live system rather than a plan.
This is the stage the dashboard tools never had — the period where the system is shaped to the way your business actually asks questions, until using it is easier than not.
It's also why sign-off didn't require certainty. The direction was approved at Stage 2; the detail settles here.
After that: maintained for the whole subscription.
Health monitoring and maintenance run remotely for as long as you subscribe, inside the fixed monthly fee. Nothing about that degrades after signature — keeping the system healthy is part of what the subscription is.
Changes and improvements after the included 90 days are charged at £800 a day, minimum one day. It's a published rate for a reason: it gives “included” a clear edge, and it means no surprise invoices on either side of the line.
And because Sysgraft isn't tied to a single AI vendor, your system improves as the underlying models do — automatically, with no migration project and nothing to rebuild.
The same job, five ways to buy it.
Category by category — no named competitors, because the comparison holds at the level of how each option is bought, which is where the last four attempts went wrong.
| Off-the-shelf platform | Outsourced dev shop | Build in-house | ERP vendor services | Sysgraft | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | Licence + configuration | £40k–£100k | Salaries + time | High day rates | No development fee |
| Time to live | Months of configuration | Months | Indefinite | Months | 10–14 days from sign-off |
| Fits your business | You bend to fit it | If you direct it well | Yes | Partly | Built to fit |
| Who manages the work | You | You, heavily | You | You | Sysgraft |
| Understands the business | Not their job | Rarely | Yours | Product-focused | Operations background before engineering |
| Ongoing maintenance | Vendor roadmap | Extra cost | Yours, forever | Extra cost | Included |
| What you commit before the build | Licence | Retainer | Headcount | Day rates | A fixed discovery fee, agreed in writing before you pay it |
Every row above is written to be read adversarially. Take it into the boardroom.
It starts with a conversation, not a contract.
Nothing on this page begins with a commitment. It begins with a conversation about your business — where the decisions are hardest, what you can't currently see, and whether Sysgraft is actually the right answer to it. If it is, discovery comes next, at a fixed fee confirmed in writing. If it isn't, you'll leave knowing more clearly what is.
With Euan Pallister — the person who would run your discovery, write your specification, and build your system. No salesperson, no obligation. Thirty minutes, online or by phone.
Check whether your systems fit →
A short form about the systems you run. Tell us where to send it and you'll get a straight answer on compatibility, plus practical guidance on managing rising AI use in the business — useful whether or not we ever speak.