Everything FutureAbility does ends in something automated. The work comes in four shapes. Most clients start small and move up; some start at the top. This page sets out what each one is and what you get at the end.
For either kind of agent, or for something that turns out not to need one.
Three weeks, one use case, a small team of ours with a couple of your people. Two questions are answered: can this be built, and should it be. The answers come as working software and a written recommendation.
At the end there is a playback, the written answer to both questions and the evidence behind it. A no is a useful result for three weeks' money. A yes rolls into a First Forward Deployment without paying for the same three weeks again.
A proof of concept is built to be thrown away. Your team does not inherit it, which is what makes three weeks possible.
A process, an app, an agent or a site. Whatever the outcome needs, worked out with the people who have the problem.
For organisations that already know where it's hurting, this is the usual starting point. We begin with the outcome the business wants and work back to whatever gets it there. Sometimes that's an automated process, sometimes an app, an agent or a site, and often a mix.
An analyst from FutureAbility works directly with the team that owns the problem, with an architect, a developer and a tester behind her. Decisions get made with the business in the room, which is how the work keeps moving. Week one establishes how the job actually runs and what will be measured. Weeks two and three test whether it can be built. At the end of week three there is a stop or go decision. Stop means three weeks paid for and a written reason. Go means the solution is built in your tenant, live at week six, and run by your people for the final two weeks while the measure is tracked.
Fixed price, agreed before the work starts. Where a proof of concept has already covered the first three weeks, the deployment takes five.
Workflows, agents, portals and integrations, usually all in the one build.
Anything larger than a single agent - a portal, a case management system, a records platform, an integration - is delivered as a fixed-price project on FutureAbility's method: Initiate, Implement, Prepare, Operate. The people who scope the work deliver it. Every project ends with twelve weeks of hypercare, because the period after go-live decides whether a system gets used. After that we can keep looking after what we built on a monthly support arrangement.
You get the system, the documentation, the training and a handover, with support until your people are running it. Some of the work is here.
The same people beside you month after month, on the decisions and the groundwork that keep the next build moving.
Some organisations need a few things in place before anything is built, and most need someone to keep them in shape afterwards. Retained Advisory is a monthly arrangement with a FutureAbility lead who gets to know your business, your tenant and your people. It covers four kinds of work, taken in whatever order you need them.
It's sized to each client: how much time each month, and which of the four comes first. That's the first conversation.
Most clients start with a proof of concept, put a first solution live, then build the rest, with advisory work wherever the groundwork is missing. Any rung can be the starting point.
The first conversation is thirty minutes with Tony Brooks. Describe the problem and you will get a straight answer on which of the four fits, or that none does yet.