Private operations tools, built for one business at a time.
Formation is how Strongside Strategy builds the small, specific software a business actually needs: a carrier and project tracker for an insurance agency, a production board for a video team. Each one is a private web app, sized to the people who use it, with a morning summary that tells you what needs attention and nothing that doesn’t.
Why bespoke
You stop bending your business to fit a board.
Trello, Monday and the rest give everyone the same board and let you decorate it. Formation starts from the work: your carriers, your recert dates, your shoots, your call-backs — named the way you already say them out loud.
A big-box board
Generic cards and columns you have to translate into your own work every time you open them. Per-seat pricing that punishes you for adding a helper. Your records living in someone else’s product, on their roadmap. Automations bolted on top, and an interface built for every industry at once — which means it was built for none of them.
Formation
Screens named after what you actually do: carriers in motion, cadence runs, lead batches, people to call back. Rules written from your own thresholds, so the tool tells you what is quiet, overdue, or waiting on approval. Your own Postgres database, your own domain, your own colours. Add a helper without a new invoice.
What you get
Software the size of your business, not the size of the market.
Built to your words
The screens, statuses and checklists are named after your own process. Nothing to translate, nothing to work around.
A morning that tells you what matters
Every hour the tool checks your own thresholds and writes one short brief: what is quiet, overdue, waiting on approval, or due to be recertified.
Your data in your own database
Each tool gets its own Postgres database on your own subdomain. Not a tenant in someone else's product, and never sold or mined.
Security in the database, not the buttons
Access rules live on every table, so a hidden button is never the control. Portal passwords are encrypted, and every reveal is logged.
No seat math
Invite the one or two people who help you without a new line on an invoice. Owners and helpers see what they should, by rule.
Connected to what you already use
Read-only Google Calendar, your CRM's feed, your mailing service's delivery counts. Connected from Settings, and disconnected the same way.
Reasonable prices
Bespoke, without the bespoke invoice.
Custom software used to mean a six-figure project and a year of waiting. Formation is built on a small, boring, well-understood stack, which is why one of these can be running in weeks and cost less to keep than the per-seat plan it replaces.
Transparent pricing
You know what the build costs and what it costs to keep running before it starts. No per-seat math, no surprise line items, no renegotiation because your team grew.
Helpers cost nothing extra
Add the people who work with you. The price does not move because your team grew by one.
Borrow what already works
Every build teaches the next one. You get to see the patterns proven in other businesses and industries, then use only the pieces that make sense for how you actually work.
How it is built
One playbook, sharpened on every build.
Every tool starts from the same tested foundation — auth, permissions, the checklist engine, the watcher that writes your morning brief — and then only the part that is specific to your business gets written from scratch. That is what keeps a bespoke build fast, and what keeps it from feeling like a first attempt.
We learn the actual work
Your statuses, your deadlines, your thresholds for “this has gone quiet.” The tool is designed around those, not the other way around.
It ships in stages you can use
Sign-in and the first real screen go live early, then each stage adds something you asked for. You are never waiting a year to see it.
Your data stays yours, and protected
Your records live in your own database, on your own domain — not pooled with anyone else’s. Sensitive values are encrypted, access is enforced on every table rather than by hiding buttons, and nothing is ever sold, mined, or used to train anything.
Current tools
Tools running today
Several businesses are running on Formation right now. What are you waiting for?