Commerce Online · Singapore Practical AI for the businesses that already run this economy Singapore · Est. 1988
Commerce Online

The short version

What you bring
A prototype that runs, however rough.
What we do
Rebuild it to production standard, on your data.
Where it starts
A written assessment, before any price.
Who owns it
You. Code, accounts and data in your name.
01The problem we solve

A demo has one user, and you are it

Prototype tools are good at the part you can see. What they skip is the part that only appears once other people are using it, on a day you are not watching.

  • It has never met a second user. Two people saving the same record, an empty field, a photo off a phone. Real use finds all of it in the first hour.
  • The data has nowhere safe to live. Prototype data usually sits inside the tool that made it. No backup, no record of who changed what, and often nowhere you can point to under the PDPA.
  • Only the prompt can change it. The next change means going back and asking again, then hoping. Nothing tells you what that just broke.
02What you get

We keep what works and rebuild what cannot be trusted

Nothing is thrown out for the sake of it. Whatever holds up in your prototype stays, and we tell you which parts those are before a price is agreed.

  • We read it before we touch it. Every screen and every line, written up as what survives, what gets rewritten, and why.
  • The data moves to a real database. Proper storage, backups, and a record of who changed what and when.
  • Logins that mean something. Real accounts and roles, and passwords and keys kept out of the code where prototypes tend to leave them.
  • It talks to your other systems. Accounting, ERP, e-mail, WhatsApp — whatever the process already runs through.
  • Tested the way it will be used. The awkward cases: two people at once, bad input, a dropped connection, the file that is too big.
  • Deployed somewhere it stays up. Hosting, monitoring, and a way to release the next version without us in the room.
03Where this fits

Some prototypes are worth rebuilding. Some are worth stopping.

Finding out which one you have costs nothing, and the first call is the cheapest place to hear it.

A man at a goods counter entering something on a tablet held in one hand, a spiked stack of paper dockets and a desk phone on the counter beside him, a colleague working behind and cartons stacked on racking. The street is visible through the open shutter.
Fig. 2The first hour of real use, which is where a demonstration usually stops working. Generated image, not a photograph of a client site.

Bring it to us

  • It runs. You can send a link, a login, an export or a repository. Which tool built it does not matter to us.
  • You can name who will use it. Three people in the office, forty in the field, or your customers. Named, not imagined.
  • The logic is already yours. The prototype puts a process you understand into software. That understanding is the valuable part, and it is the part AI did not give you.
  • It touches real work. Orders, quotes, stock, claims, jobs, timesheets — something the business already does by hand or in a spreadsheet.

We would tell you not to

  • It is still a document. There is nothing to read yet. AI Opportunity Consulting is the cheaper place to start.
  • Software you already pay for does this. If a module in your accounting or ERP system covers it, buying beats building, and we will say so in writing.
  • Nobody inside owns it. A system with no owner is quietly abandoned by the second quarter, however well it was built.
  • The demo is the whole idea. If there is no process behind it, rebuilding it properly only makes the demo more expensive.
04What we read first

Before anything is quoted, you get this in writing

The assessment note, empty. These are the real headings — including the two that can talk us out of the work.

Prototype assessment — template

Prototype ________ · read on ________

What it does today
Written back to you in plain terms, so you can tell us where we have misread it.
What survives
The parts of your prototype we would keep, and why they hold up.
What gets rewritten
The parts we would not put in front of a customer, named one by one.
What we would cut
Features worth dropping from the first version — usually the ones that made the demo impressive.
Where the data would live
The database, where it is hosted, who can read it, and how it is backed up.
What it would cost, in parts
Priced by stage, so you can approve the first part without committing to all of them.
What would make us say no
If the honest answer is to buy something off the shelf, this is the line it goes on.
Why we will not quote from a demonstration

A prototype’s code says things a demonstration cannot: what it does when it fails, where it writes data, and what it has quietly borrowed from somewhere else. A price set before reading that is a guess, and the correction always arrives later, as a variation on your invoice.

So the assessment comes first and in writing. The price for the build comes after it, against what the note actually found.

05How it works

From the thing you built to the thing your staff use

Five stages. You can stop after any one of them and keep everything produced up to that point.

  1. 01Send it overA link, an export or a repository, plus what it is meant to do and who for.
  2. 02AssessmentWe read the code and write the note above. It is yours whether or not you carry on.
  3. 03Scope and priceThe build, split into parts you can approve one at a time.
  4. 04RebuildData, logins, integrations, testing. You watch it run on your own data as it goes.
  5. 05Go live and hand overDeployed in your accounts and documented, so the next change need not come through us.
06What you own at the end

It ends in your name, not ours

The test of a handover is whether you could take the next change to somebody else. That is easier to agree before the invoice than after, so it goes in the engagement.

Source code
Yours, in your repository, written in something your next developer will recognise.
Accounts and hosting
Set up in your company’s name and paid by you, with us added as a user you can remove.
The database
Your data, exportable in a standard format on any day of the engagement, not just the last one.
Documentation
How it deploys, what it connects to, and the decisions that would otherwise stay in our heads.
After it is live
Support is agreed in writing before go-live, in whatever shape suits you. We are not going to print a response time on a web page that we have not discussed with you.
What we do not do
We do not hold your keys, licence you a runtime of our own, or charge you to get the code back.

Talk to us

Send us what you built

A link, an export or a repository, and a line about what it is meant to do. You get the assessment note back in writing — free, and yours to take to somebody else for a second opinion.

Talk to us Apply for a test bed

The other ending

Some assessments end with “do not build this”. We write those too, and they cost you the same as the other kind.