Build SME software around existing workflows
AI-assisted software building gives SMEs a practical alternative to reshaping their work around generic systems that only partly fit.
Developed from a conversation between Pete Winn, Kane Leersen and Andy David
Off-the-shelf software often gives a small business a useful foundation without matching how the business actually operates. At Regional Prosperity, Kane considered Dynamics 365 but expected the enterprise platform to cover only 50 to 60 per cent of the firm’s needs. The rest would still have required compromises and additional tools around the edges.
Regional Prosperity instead built a customer relationship management system on Microsoft’s Power Platform. It also began as a partial solution, but the team could extend it layer by layer until it fitted the business more closely. That flexibility mattered because the firm could preserve its own processes instead of accepting the fixed boundaries of a general product.
AI is making this kind of tailored software more accessible to SMEs that could never have justified an internal engineering team. A person who understands the business problem and can reason through how systems fit together can increasingly build tools for the exact workflow at hand. The remaining constraint is not access to software alone. The builder must still identify the right problem, because each useful layer depends on an accurate understanding of the work.