You built something valuable. Only one team uses it.
What we noticed
Industrial Technology built software that predicts when machines are about to break. Today it runs on one product line. Two other teams have almost the same problem — and they pay three outside vendors to solve it.
Sources: DOC-207 · DOC-233 · DOC-241 · 2 quoted interviews · 3 numbers with their arithmetic
Where this came from
We looked at this from both sides: what the documents record, and what people inside the company say.
Two sources, laid over each other
The two don't matchThe documents say
Project plans in two teams list outside vendors as the only way to predict machine failures. $61M a year leaves the company for it.
7 documents · 3 teams · vendor invoices
The people say
Engineers in those teams already suspected an internal version existed. They had no reason and no route to go and find out.
148 people · 5 businesses
“There's no cost to not calling. That's the problem.”
What the two together tell us
The documents show the spend. The people show the reason. Neither on its own would have told you it's a visibility problem, not a technology problem.
What's written down and what people live are different. That gap is usually where the real problem sits.
What it would be worth
Two kinds of value. What the company gains, and what changes for the people doing the work.
What it's worth to the company
$61M / yr
Money moving outside
Paid to three vendors for work an internal team already does.
What it's worth to the people
Engineers stop waiting for things to break.
- No more rebuilding what a sister team already finished.
- Fewer emergency callouts at night and on weekends.
- A reason — and a route — to talk to people in other businesses.
Unplanned callouts
−31%
What the same tool already did for the team that built it.
Why we noticed it
The three teams describe the same problem in different words, so nobody noticed. We matched the technical description of the tool against the problems the other two teams wrote down, then found the outside vendor bills for that same work.
- 2 separate projects chasing the same problem
- $61M a year paid outside for similar work
- No shared plan, budget or owner between the three teams
Same pattern in 7 documents · 3 teams
Why it could matter
The tool is built and working. The question isn't whether to invest. It's whether three teams should share one thing you already have — and whether customers would pay for it too.
You may already own what you are paying for. And it may be a product, not just an internal tool.
What we don't know yet
- Whether the tool still works well on machines it wasn't built for.
- Whether the vendor contracts can be exited in the next 18 months.
- Who would own a shared tool across three profit centres.
The question
Does this only work on the machines it was built for?