We build AI-powered business systems you own.
Rented tools that do not join up, the same record typed in twice, bills nobody reviews. We build one system in their place, designed around how your business works and run on accounts in your name: scripts, scheduled jobs and links between the tools you already use, with AI where a job needs it.
A new firm, run by three people with decades of shipped work behind them.
The AI you bought added subscriptions. It did not remove the problem.
We see the same picture often. A business buys a tool for each job as the job turns up: a customer system, an accounts package, a scheduling app, a couple of spreadsheets, and lately an “AI employee” or two, each doing one narrow thing and none of them built to join up. The same customer, order or invoice gets typed into three of them by hand, every week, by someone whose time was meant for something else. If you never bought any AI, the pile is probably there anyway; the AI tools are only its newest layer, and the industry has started calling that layer agent sprawl.
We build one system. It starts where it costs you most.
Not nine agents and not a chain of rented tools: one system, designed around how your business actually works and built from standard parts we have already hardened, that does the job end to end, with its automation built in. It is modular, so the next job it takes on extends the same system instead of adding another tool that does not join up.
Three shapes we see often.
- Data that lives in five places: the customer record typed into the CRM, the accounts system, the fulfilment tool and two spreadsheets.
- Quoting that loses deals: three days, two people, the same numbers rekeyed into three systems.
- Week-long month-end: three days every month reconciling exports from four tools into one report.
Three shapes, not a menu. If yours is not here, the first call is still the right next step.
Size. Design. Build.
Size. A free 45-minute call. Bring the list of tools the business pays for, if you have one. We work out what the problem is, roughly how big it is, and whether we are the right firm, and you leave with a ballpark, given in the room.
Design. The first paid stage. What you buy is a document: what the system is, what it does, what it costs to build and what it costs to run. Paid before we start, and yours to keep, whoever builds it.
Build. Quoted from the design, and it costs more than the design. Built in two moves, each priced in writing: a working prototype your business can use early, then the finished system you run.
Each stage is priced in writing before you commit to it and has a point where you can stop, so every phase can be proved before the next is paid for. Then the software is licensed to you, and care is optional. There is no subscription. Some jobs need AI; many need a script that runs at six every morning. We will tell you if AI is not the answer.
Not every job is a system. A smaller, defined job (a fix, a script, a job that runs on a schedule, a link between two tools you already use, or a change to an app your team built) skips the design stage: describe it and we quote it in writing before we start.
You own your system. We own the software it runs on.
Yours, from the day it ships:
- the accounts it runs on, in your name and on your card: hosting, the database, email sending and AI;
- your data and your content;
- anything we build only for you;
- a licence to the software it runs on, permanent for the version you have.
Datum Forge is never on those bills, and you can leave any day with what is yours. It is your own system, not a seat on a shared platform. Care, which keeps the software updated and supported, is optional and priced separately.
Datum Forge is early. The people running it are not.
Alex Fielder, Chief Technology Officer. Decades of production code across traditional software and web systems. Owns every architectural decision past the design stage.
Michael Colling-Tuck, Chief Revenue Officer. Diagnosis from all three sides of the table: operator, consultant, supplier. Owns the diagnosis and the commercial conversation.
Mark Barrett, Chief Operating Officer. Two decades in digital marketing; building websites since 2012. Owns delivery, the platform and operations.
What if we disappeared?
The system keeps running. It is on accounts in your name, your data stays in them, and your licence to the version you have does not expire.
What we can show you today.
We are new, and we are not going to invent five years of case studies. What is real: the three of us and our own work; the method above, which is exactly what you would experience if you engaged us tomorrow; and three systems already in use, described on the About page by the work each one took off someone’s desk.
Forty-five minutes, free. No obligation. We will tell you if a system is the answer.
Tell us what your business does, which tools it runs on and where the same work gets done twice. If a system is the right answer, you leave with a ballpark and a plain explanation of how the design stage works. If it is not, we say so, and point you somewhere better.