Digitalization
Without the Bonfire.
Why the small-projects approach beats the big-bang transformation — and how to do it without setting half a million pounds alight.
What the vendor sold you was a dashboard. What you bought was a five-year decision.
Every consulting firm on the planet has the same picture in their deck right now: a boardroom, a glowing hex-grid AI, and a CEO smiling at his iPad. The reality, when the chequebook closes, looks rather different.
programs fail to meet their stated objectives.
Source: McKinsey / BCG meta-analyses
Every failed ERP I have personally been inside failed on one of these three things. Usually all three.
The legacy spine has to move, and it never moves cleanly. Bad data in. Worse data out. Months of reconciliation nobody scoped.
Twelve systems, none of which were designed to speak to each other. The "API project" becomes the actual project — and dies inside it.
The CFO needs the same numbers she had on Friday. New stack, new numbers, no trust. The board never reads the new dashboards.
The Doom Loop.
Spec. Build. Discover. Restart.
This was my life for twenty years. By the time you finished, the business had moved on. The technology had moved on. And you had spent a million quid in pursuit of conditions that no longer existed.
"Just bolt AI on top."
Same disconnected data. Same broken integrations. Now with a chatbot that hallucinates.
"We've seen AI use-cases burn 500,000 tokens to generate a €5 report."
There is a
different way.
And the people in this room who've already been doing it know what I'm about to say.
small, controlled sprints
that prove ROI in weeks — not years.
Two ways to digitise a business.
| Big-bang transformation | Controlled, small steps | |
|---|---|---|
| Timeline | 12 — 24 months | First wins in weeks |
| Budget | Millions, fixed up-front | Modular. Pay-as-you-prove. |
| Risk profile | All-or-nothing | Reversible at every step |
| First ROI | After go-live, if at all | After the first sprint |
| Built by | Off-site dev team | Business user + consultant, in the room |
| If it goes wrong | Write-off | Stop, pivot, keep what worked |
| User acceptance | Very low | Full confidence |
Do these in this order. Always.
The third step is deliberately small. AI is the last thing you add, not the first.
A business user. A Make consultant. The source system on screen.
Working integration in days. Sometimes hours. Not specified. Not estimated. Running.
Why Make is the platform that makes this possible.
Make it Future · Largest Make partner in Europe by service delivery · London · Paris · Bucharest
"OK. So how
do we actually start?"
At this point in every conversation, someone asks the same question. Here's the answer.
A small, controlled engagement to start.
Fixed scope.
Fixed price.
Walk away after step two with a strategic document you own — and nothing more spent.
This is not a theory.
"A huge thank you to the entirety of MakeItFuture — what an amazing company you have, with fantastic employees. A pleasure to work with."
"I have been doing projects for more than 30 years with budgets sometimes in millions. I have rarely observed such a sense of commitment. A five-stars experience."
"Really positive. They truly understand low-code, no-code, and AI — and they're very cost-effective. We deploy fast, fail fast if it's wrong, and move on."
We made this our entire business in 2019. We never went back.
Europe by services
in Romania
Paris · Bucharest
our entire business
Hubexo · UPSA · BW Workplace Experts · Verilocation · Tyrens · Selected customers
Controlled.
Real ROI.
In weeks, not years."