METHODWRIGHTPlatforms
The systems I work in
I build on what you already license. Whichever ecosystem your business runs on, the work sits alongside your core system rather than in front of it.
Why this matters more than it sounds
A tool built on a platform you do not already own creates a bill you keep paying long after the project ends, and an administrator you may not have. It also creates the thing nobody budgets for: a second place to look.
So the first question in any build is what you are already paying for. In most cases the answer covers it, and the honest recommendation is to use the license sitting unused in your subscription rather than to buy anything at all.
Ecosystems
Microsoft 365 and Power Platform
Where I am deepest. Structured lists and document libraries, low-code applications, automated flows, dashboards and reporting, and portal front ends. Plus the surrounding cloud services where a build needs them: identity and access, hosted functions, static sites, and usage telemetry.
Google Workspace
Sheets, Forms, Drive, and scripted automation for businesses whose everyday work already lives there. Suitable for intake capture, structured records, approval routing, and recurring reporting without introducing a second ecosystem alongside it.
Zoho
A capable and frequently underused suite. Where a business already runs Zoho for mail, CRM, or accounting, the application and workflow tooling in the same subscription will usually carry the build without additional cost.
Cloudflare
Domains, DNS, and the edge services around a public-facing form or site: routing, access control, and keeping an intake form reachable and protected. Usually supporting work rather than the build itself.
Your line-of-business system
ERP, warehouse management, accounting, CRM, dispatch, practice management, whatever the business actually runs on. I read from it, write back to it where that is supported and sensible, and leave it alone otherwise.
I do not replace it. That is worth saying plainly, because the most expensive advice a small business receives is usually that its problems require a new core system. Occasionally that is true. Far more often the core system is fine and the pain is in what people improvised around its edges.
Integration is limited by what your system exposes. Some publish a clean interface, some offer a database connection, and some offer an export and nothing more. Any of those can be worked with; which one you have affects what a build costs and how it behaves, so it is established early rather than discovered late.
If you run something not listed here
Ask. The method does not depend on the platform: I follow the work, measure it, and rewrite the procedure before building the tool, whatever the tool ends up built on.
Where I am not the right person to build on your stack, I will tell you that in the first conversation rather than three weeks into an engagement. That answer costs you nothing.
A note on lock-in
Anything I build runs in your tenant, on your licenses, holding your data, documented well enough for someone else to maintain. If a build genuinely requires something you do not already own, I say so before the work starts, together with what it will cost you to keep afterward.