Who Decided the Software Makes the Rules?
You were never the business the software was built for.
For a long time, the deal with business software went something like this. A big company built a platform, decided how it should work, and called that “best practice.” Your job was to fit in. You reshaped how you booked clients, tracked customers, ran your day — not because it suited you, but because that’s what the system allowed.
And mostly, we accepted it. It felt normal. Of course the software knows best. It’s used by thousands of businesses, so it must be right.
But I’ve found myself sitting with a question lately that I can’t quite let go of.
Who decided that technology gets to determine how we look after our customers?
Best Practice for Whom?
“Best practice” usually means best for the average. It’s built for a business that doesn’t really exist — a blend of everyone, specific to no one. And if your business has any character to it at all, any way of doing things that’s genuinely yours, you’ve probably felt the friction.
The workaround you’ve done for so long you’ve forgotten it was ever a workaround. A genuinely good part of your service that the system simply has no field for. That low background sense that you’re bending yourself around the tool, when it was meant to be the other way round.
What’s Starting to Flip
What’s shifting now is that this is starting to change.
With AI, it’s becoming genuinely possible to build systems shaped around how your business actually runs, rather than squeezing your business into someone else’s idea of how it should. Not as a huge tech project with a huge budget. As something within reach.
I want to be careful here, because this isn’t a story about AI magically solving everything.
The Work Is Still Yours to Do
Building something that fits you takes real thought. You have to understand how your business actually works — not the tidy version, the real one. You have to know where the pressure sits, what your customers actually experience, and which parts of your process are precious and which are just habit. That’s the work. The technology is the easy bit by comparison.
But the part that’s genuinely changing is the permission. For the first time, you’re not forced to conform. You’re not stuck choosing between three platforms that all almost fit. You can start from your own operations and ask the technology to serve them, instead of the other way round.
Putting It Back the Right Way Round
That’s a bigger shift than it sounds. It moves the question from “how do we adapt to this software?” to “what do we actually need, and how should it work for us?” And once you’ve asked it that way, it’s hard to go back to being squeezed into someone else’s shape.
The tools were always meant to serve the work. Somewhere along the way we let that get reversed. What’s interesting about this moment is that we finally get to put it back the right way round.
Further Reading
- You Don’t Have to Be Good at Social Media — the companion to this piece; the same idea applied to social media, where someone else’s rules quietly became the standard
- AI Should Make You Smarter. Is Yours? — extends the thread of AI serving your thinking, rather than setting the terms for you
- When Automation Helps — and When It Makes Things Worse — the discernment underneath all of this: technology earns its place when it reduces friction, not when it adds it
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What does “best practice” actually mean in business software? It usually means what works for the average business the platform was designed around — a blend of many, specific to none. It can be a genuinely useful starting point, but it’s not the same as what’s best for your business, your customers, or the way you actually work.
Q: Can small businesses really build their own systems now? Increasingly, āe. AI has lowered the barrier considerably. It’s becoming possible to shape tools around how your business runs without the huge budgets or long timelines that used to put custom systems out of reach. It’s no longer only an option for big companies.
Q: Doesn’t building something custom take a lot of technical skill? The technology is the easier part now. The harder, more valuable work is understanding your own operations — where the pressure sits, what your customers experience, what’s essential and what’s just habit. Get that clear, and the building becomes far more straightforward.
Q: How do I decide whether to adapt to a platform or build around my business? Look at where the friction lives. If you’re constantly working around a tool, or the parts of your service that matter most have nowhere to live in the system, that’s a signal the fit is wrong. Sometimes adapting is fine. Sometimes it’s quietly costing you more than you think.
Q: Is AI making custom business systems more affordable? Yes — that’s the genuine shift. What once required a large team and budget is becoming achievable at a much smaller scale. The point isn’t to build for the sake of it, but that conforming to someone else’s platform is no longer the only path available.
