What a design partnership looks like for a logistics company: one site first

We do not sell this as a self-serve product, and we are not going to pretend it is one. Centralizing warehouse data across sites is work done with a company, not to it, and the way we do that work is a design partnership. This is what one involves, so you can judge whether it fits.

Who it is for

Four things make a logistics company a good fit.

• More than one site. If you run a single warehouse, you can already see across it. The problem we solve starts at two.
• SQL Server, MongoDB or Postgres at the sites. Any of those is a quick start; SQL Server is ready now, MongoDB next, Postgres after that. Other databases are possible, but tell us what you have before assuming.
• One IT contact who can get us access to one site. Not a committee, not every site's administrator; one person at one site is enough to begin.
• An appetite to start small. One site, one set of tables, something useful in your hands early, then the rest at your pace.

If you are missing the first or second, we are probably not the right partner yet. If you are missing the third, that is the thing to find first.

The first site

The first site is where the shape gets decided, so it gets the most attention. It begins with an architecture review against your actual schema (the tables and columns your database really has): which tables the head office needs, how rows are identified, how deletions show up, what the site's internet connection looks like, and what the reports should say. That review is part of the subscription rather than a separate engagement.

Then a person from our team, working with your IT contact, installs the small sync service inside the site's network, next to the warehouse database. It sends changes outward and nothing connects inward, and nothing at the warehouse is replaced or rewritten. The first sync copies the chosen tables to the central store in your cloud account, and from then on only changes travel.

Within a short time you have a central copy of one site, current to within a couple of minutes, and a first report reading from it. That is the moment to judge the thing: not a slide, but your rows, from your warehouse, on a screen at head office.

Who does what

A person drives the rollout. The service is not something that installs and configures itself, and we do not describe it that way. Our engineer runs the rollout tool, makes the choices, checks the result, and stays in contact as the first days of data arrive.

Your team builds the reports and any portal. We do not build them for you, and this is deliberate: you know what a regional manager needs to see and we do not. We advise on the shape of the data, supply tools for building against the central copy, and recommend what to build first. The reports, the dashboards and the portal are yours, in your reporting tool, owned and changed by you.

Your IT contact grants access and answers questions about the site. That is the extent of the demand on them for the first site.

Adding sites and tables

Each additional site needs its own setup. It is the same rollout every time, not a fresh build, but it is a planned piece of work with a date, a person and a checklist, and the site's own IT staff involved. We schedule sites at your pace.

Adding a table to a site that is already running is a setting change, and again a person makes it. It is quick, but it is work someone does, and we say so because a promise that you can just flip a switch is the kind that causes trouble later.

How the subscription works

Design partners pay a subscription rather than a project fee. Keeping a central copy current from many sites is continuous work; schemas drift, sites go offline, someone has to notice when a warehouse quietly stops sending. A one-off fee would leave you with something nobody is paid to look after.

The minimum term is twelve months, paid annually at the lower rate or monthly across the same term. The subscription includes the architecture review, deployment, support, monitoring and improvements for as long as you subscribe, with direct access to the engineers who built it. There is no free trial and no free review; the first site, on the subscription, is the proof.

Design-partner pricing is an early-customer rate held for the length of your contract, and the program is open to a small number of companies rather than indefinitely.

One site, one set of tables, your own rows on a screen at head office; then decide how far to go.

redfly works this way with a small number of logistics companies at a time, starting from a single site.