The suite has sophisticated security and compliance measures and a beautiful, soon-to-be-stress-tested user interface. Under the hood it’s a robust system with reliable, single-source-of-truth data and workflows based on rigorously mapped and defined processes the team has bought in on. Our fallbacks have fallbacks. Over the next few months, refining and bolstering this toolset will be the biz ops team’s central focus, in preparation for a full rollout ahead of 2026.
We built it ourselves—mapped business logic hierarchies, argued over terminology, created a Jira instance, wrote tech docs, ran bug bashes—and I’m so, so proud of the team’s accomplishment.
We chose to build rather than buy for a few key reasons. Given Steyer’s size, the available pre-made solutions are too hefty and too pricy for our needs—and yet, our needs must still be met, and soon. We’ve spent years and excruciating amounts of effort on configuring off-the-shelf solutions in the past, to lackluster results; we weren’t eager to experience that pain again. We’re in a time of massive change, making us less willing to invest upfront in a solution we can’t trust to fit. Given generative AI’s advances in coding and documentation capability, our talented in-house developer was able to build this entire suite in a timeframe that would have been utterly unthinkable just a few years ago. And last but not least, the build process—done right—results in both professional growth for the team and a team-wide, deep understanding of our inner workings. We’re now stronger and more prepared for whatever comes our way.
Wishing you all an autumn full of learning, hope, and ultra-specific defining of terms,
Katelyn
Photo by Jepretualang on Unsplash