1
One thing, held in several places
A product, a person, a job, a machine. Each system keeps the part of it that system cares about, and none of them keeps the whole thing.
2
Each place is slightly right
The versions disagree in small ways that are hard to spot and expensive to be wrong about. Which one you believe depends on which screen you opened.
3
Keeping them agreeing is a job
Somebody re-types, exports, compares and corrects — every week, forever, producing nothing new. Usually the person you can least afford to have doing it.
Worked example
Product Pipeline
The thing is a product, and it lives in finance, stock, the image library, sales and the website — five versions of one item.
See the page
Worked example
Prospect Pipeline
The thing is a person you might sell to, and they live in your inbox, LinkedIn, a spreadsheet, a notebook, a quote and eventually the accounts.
See the pageJobs and scheduling
What was promised, who's doing it, when they're free, and what the customer was told — four answers, four places.
Suppliers and purchasing
Prices agreed in email, orders raised in one system, deliveries checked on paper, invoices argued about later.
Equipment and maintenance
What you own, where it is, when it was last serviced and what it cost you — usually a spreadsheet and somebody's memory.
Staff and compliance
Who's trained, who's certified, what expires next month. Fine until the one month nobody checks.
Orders, quote to delivery
A quote, an order, a picking note, a delivery and an invoice — the same order, retyped at every handover.
If yours isn't on that list it very probably still fits. The subject matters far less than the shape: one thing, several partial versions, and somebody in the middle keeping them honest.
Nothing is ripped out. The systems you run stay, the people who use them carry on using them, and the work is the joining-up between them — built in stages, in the order that pays back first.
What I need to know first is what you've actually got, which is rarely what the org chart or the software list says. So it begins with looking, not proposing.
1
I look at what's really there
The systems, the spreadsheets that quietly hold the business together, and the jobs people do by hand because nothing else does them. No workshops. Mostly watching and asking.
2
I find where one thing is held twice
Every place the same product, person, job or order exists in more than one version — and what it costs you each week to keep those versions agreeing.
3
We agree what one flow looks like
What it would take to join them, in what order, and which join to do first. You get that in plain terms, including the honest answer if the work isn't worth doing.
Each stage stands on its own and the business keeps trading throughout. You can stop after any one of them and still be better off than you were.
Tell me what your business runs on and where the same thing gets typed in twice, and I'll tell you plainly whether a pipeline would help — and what the first one would involve.
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