2026-09-25

I’ve recently found myself on both sides of the same administrative problem.

As a supplier, I’m being asked to navigate customer procurement systems, complete forms and deal with questions about withholding tax.

As a customer, I’m waiting for a software company to process my request to buy something.

Different organisations. Different systems. Same underlying problem.

The outcome is straightforward, but getting there requires somebody outside the organisation to understand and operate its internal processes.

We’ve become very good at building systems around how organisations work.

Perhaps we should spend more time thinking about how people actually get things done.

The customer shouldn’t need to understand your organisation to do business with it.